Help importing historical stock prices

[Mike or Penny Novack]

On 6/20/2016 9:47 AM, Jim Vincent wrote:
> So if I want accurate data for past periods, don't I need market prices for securities at those time?
> Jim
Yes, but you are perhaps confusing obtaining data from gnucash from 
BEFORE you were using gnucash (going back and and filling in) with being 
able to have that information going FORWARD.

Let's say, for example, you want quarterly evaluations. Then you run the 
Balance Sheet at the end of each quarter and EXPORT that (add date to 
each file name and put into a directory with a name like "Quarterly 
Balance Sheets". To run each of these, as the time comes to run it, you 
do not need "historical" values, just current values.

Do you see a problem with that?

But I think what you are asking is along the lines of "I wasn't doing 
that for X number of past years. How do I go back and produce that 
data?" Well that is a rather different problem. The simple answer is 
that unless you can recreate an environment where gnucash would have 
access to that "valuation data" you can't. But that isn't gnucash's 
fault. It isn't gnucash that is failing but whatever you are using as 
the source of the "valuation data" (that is something coming from 
OUTSIDE of gnucash).

Look, going back and recreating a lost output is something they used to 
pay me to do. It involved setting up an ENVIRONMENT where the system 
dates were set to what was wanted, the program versions restored to what 
they were as of that date, and all the data files and databases restored 
to that date from backups made at the time. If you DON'T have that data, 
can't be done.

Michael D Novack