Investments and minimizing the account structure?

[John Ralls]

> On Jan 8, 2017, at 6:44 PM, Andrew Gross <biz.aeg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Tracking investments (stocks, mutual funds, etc.) requires a separate
> account for each type of security.  Am thinking this is part of a strict
> usage of double-entry accounting.  However, I am curious as to whether it
> is reasonably possible where the number of accounts is minimized to where
> the securities are held.  For example, recording all transactions for a set
> of securities that are maintained at one investment company and the account
> therefore is just the account at that that company, like a checking account
> is associated with the name of the bank + the checking account number.
> Part of my thinking is I wonder how day traders would use GnuCash; I
> couldn't imagine their creating a separate account for every security.
> Maybe this method would not have as many features as proper
> double-accounting but would work to a certain degree; or am I missing
> something and it would not work at all or work very badly?


It would work.

The basic constraint is that an account is the object that knows the commodity; normally each security is a separate commodity so you need a separate account for each. In order to account for multiple securities in a single account you'd have to monetize them: You'd carry the shares of a particular security at it's purchase value in the brokerage account's primary currency, with the number of shares/units recorded in one of the text fields (trans:description, trans:notes, split:action, or split:memo). You'd lose all of the pricing features and the lots facility.

Regards,
John Ralls