[GNC] Cash in investment has a "price"?

[john]

> On Oct 28, 2023, at 09:50, Marcus Winston <marcus at thechocolatehouse.net> wrote:
> 
> I've just updated to GC 5.4-1 (flatpak; linux). Something really strange is going on. In the Advanced Portfolio report, the cash balance is reported in USD (the correct currency), but the price of the currency is not $1. Sometimes it's $11.88, sometimes it's $92.xx (92 and change). I did not notice this before, so it may have happened under the previous version I was running 4.something). But, something is really wrong. When I click on the hyperlink on the price, it takes me to the price editor for a mutual fund that is not even part of the account.
> 
> I did a fix and repair all, but that doesn't seem to have fixed it. Any hints as to where to look would be appreciated.

I guess you mean that you included a currency account in the APR accounts as the APR doesn't have anything labelled "cash balance". Acting on that guess I tried it and found that the report logic apparently has no special-casing for an account in the report currency so it goes looking for a price in the pricedb. Of course it won't find anything for USD-USD, so it looks for a two-step conversion, USD->XXX->USD, comes up with something, and proceeds to use that something to generate nonsense for the rest of the line. 

While it's not hard to think of same-currency accounts that would make sense to be included in the APR--a certificate of deposit comes immediately to mind--it's also easy to think of cases where that could only produce nonsense, starting with your brokerage cash account. Figuring out the "basis" and separating out the sweep or money-market income from changes due to trades and inflows from other holdings would be inordinately complex.

For the true currency investment like a CD or even a savings account you can work around the pricing fail and generate a meaningful line in the APR by inventing a security. That's technically correct for Money Market funds, where you own units in the fund and the managers exert a great deal of effort to keep the price of those units at $1.00, which effort is not always successful.

Regards,
John Ralls