Gold

[Jean-David Beyer]

On 01/11/2017 10:10 PM, Leo Bolta wrote:
> Hello Gnu users,
>  
> I've only been using GnuCash for about three weeks now but love it.  I was
> recently pleasantly surprised to learn that a double entry accounting system
> can be catered to handling the fluctuating values of investments.
>  
> My fundamental question is regards to how to incorporate into the Gnu
> system, the fluctuating values of an inventory of physical gold.  If one had
> bought physical gold in a country outside of the US but the initial purchase
> was based on the US currency, wouldn't one have to take the current market
> price of gold in the US$, then establish the price based on the value of the
> US$ that it was initially purchased, then convert again into the current
> local based currency?  

I guess it depends on what you use gold for.
In my GnuCash account, gold is in
Assets->Investments->Precious Metals->Gold.
Gold is a Mutual fund (though I have no mutual funds, just physical
metal). And I have a certain number of units of it: so and so many
ounces. It does track what I paid for the gold in US dollars, but I
bought it using US dollars from a US dealer. I even paid the required
end use tax required by my state.
If I want to know the current price of the gold, I can get the spot
price from the Internet, but the spot price is meaningless in the sense
that you cannot buy gold for that price. You usually must pay about a 5%
premium for it. And if you are buying tones (literally) of the stuff,
the premium can rise to 50% or more because those who have the physical
stuff mostly do not wish to sell.

It seems to me if you want to know the price of the gold you have on a
daily basis, you probably should not be purchasing the stuff. You can
get a chart of spot gold prices from various places, but they are just
for paper gold, not physical.

-- 
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