How do I take delivery of stock certificates? (Not a brokerage question.)

Jean-David Beyer jeandavid8 at verizon.net
Sat May 7 14:47:40 EDT 2016


On 05/06/2016 06:54 PM, Wm wrote:
[snip]
>>>>> If you look at Tools / Security Editor do the shares appear more
>>>>> than once or once only?
>>>>
>>>> Once only.
>>>>>
>>>>> If you look at Tools / Price Editor do the shares have accurate
>>>>>
>>>>> Date
>>>>> Price
>>>>>
>>>>> entries on or around the dates you made significant transfers?
>>>>
>>>> No price at all.
>>>
>>> There is your problem.  The balance sheet expects to find prices in
>>> the price database.  You can enter them by hand if for some reason
>>> they haven't been created when you entered the trasactions.
>>> Fetching up to date prices is usually done through the bundled
>>> Finance::Quote module.
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> These should be close to market values aat the time for most
>>>>> purposes rather than transfer values which could be weird for many
>>>>> reasons.
>>>>>
>>>>> Having checked that, open up a balance sheet (try both and see
>>>>
>>>> both what?
>>>
>>> Both balance sheets, GnuCash has two.
>>
>> Really? This is the first I have heard about that.
>>
>> I used the one under Income & Expense. That one is set to "End of
>> Accounting Period" for the date.
>> I just tried the one under Assets & Liabilities, using today's date.
>>
>> They look the same.
> 
> What version of GnuCash are you using?

gnucash-2.4.15-4.el6.x86_64

the latest one for my Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 6.7
(Santiago) distribution.
> 
> Reports / Assets & Liabilities has had two balance sheets
> Balance Sheet
> Balance Sheet using eguile-gnc
> for many years now.

I figured out what you meant after I sent my last message.
> 
> Also there isn't a Balance Sheet under Income & Expense, the Trial 
> Balance report serves a different purpose to a Balance Sheet and 
> you shouldn't really be using it in this context unless you've 
> chosen Report Variation: Work Sheet.
> 
> An Equity Statement could be useful if you set the dates right and 
> limit the accounts appropriately but you have specifically said 
> Balance Sheet so I'm uncertain if we are talking about comparable 
> versions.
> 
>>>
>>>>> which suits your example better) and look at what you have for
>>>>> Price Source
>>>>
>>>> Nothing.
>>>
>>> In that case you may have a more serious and novel problem.  To the
>>> best of my knowledge
>>> Report options / Commodities / Price source
>>> for a balance sheet can't be nothing.
>>>
>>>>> and (obviously)
>>>>> Date (it is a balance sheet so must have that)
>>>>
>>>> Balance Sheet 2016-12-31
>>>
>>> Try Today rather than some point in the future while you are
>>> troubleshooting, you don't know what the stock price will be at the
>>> end of the year.
>>>
>>>>> and tick (or check or whatever it is in your home language)
>>>>> the boxes that Show Currencies and Show Exchange Rates and so on
>>>>> and look at what is shown.
>>>>
>>>> Berkshire-Hathaway Class A
>>>> 3 BRK.A	$97,800.00
>>
>> If I change Balance Sheet->Commodities->Price Source from AverageCost
>> from 3 BRK.A	$97,800.00
>> to Weighted Average, it gives
>>      3 BRK.A	$412,400.01
>> which is nuts.
> 
> For a balance sheet including traded stuff you generally want 
> Nearest in Time as you want the report to show the value of the 
> asset at the time of the report, often Today or the end of last 
> month or the end of last year.  Not often a time in the future as 
> you don't usually know what the asset will be worth, there are 
> exceptions with futures, traded options, stock borrowing, etc that 
> don't apply to what we are talking about in this thread.
> 
>> If I change Balance Sheet->Commodities->Price Source from AverageCost to
>> Most Recent it gives
>>     3 BRK.A	$0.00
>> But it then wrecks the cost of my bullion gold, but silver is OK.
> 
> Why are you trying everything except the Nearest in Time?  That, 
> plus prices near the report date in your price db, will give you 
> sensible results.

Average cost was the default and I never changed it.

Nearest in time gives me 0.00 for Berkshire Hathaway.
a big number for silver about 5x what I paid for the stuff, and way too
much, and 0.08 for gold (actually worth much more).
> 
>>> The current price for BRK.A is around 215,880.00 each.  Your price
>>> database doesn't have the data GnuCash needs to give you a
>>> meaningful balance sheet.
>>>
>> It seems to me, it should have the data, since it got at least the data
>> point when each item was purchased, and should be able to use that as
>> the cost basis.
> 
> OK, lets try some detail.
> In Tools / Price Editor
> find BRK.A
> you should have a list that your eye can identify as containing 
> dates and prices for BRK.A.  You should have at a minumum a date 
> and a price for each transaction you have recorded in GnuCash 
> *plus* a price fairly close to the date you want to report on: 
> today or end of last year for example.

There are NO entries in there (NYSE) for Berkshire Hathaway.
There are entries for BRK.B.

Most transactions and stocks and commodities are absent, but some are there.

It seems that these are included in a whimsical way.
> 
> Once you've got prices relevant to your report date into the price 
> db for each of your commodites *then* you can start looking at 
> other stuff like the Advanced Portfolio or a Balance Sheet, without 
> that you are asking GnuCash to invent valuations.
> 
I do not think I am asking it to invent valuations. It needs only the
initial transaction in the price editor to determine the cost basis. And
most of these, but not all, are missing.

-- 
  .~.  Jean-David Beyer          Registered Linux User 85642.
  /V\  PGP-Key:166D840A 0C610C8B Registered Machine  1935521.
 /( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey    http://linuxcounter.net
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