[GNC] properly record short-selling

[Christopher Lam]

Not sure how to record your particular transaction with short-selling stock
and foreign currency both involved.
This sounds like a mess for you and for your accountant.
There's a Stock Transaction Assistant which is activated when you're
viewing your STOCK account and is intended to record stock activity eg
buy/sell/dividends etc and *does* also adapt to short positions, but it
will only record in your stock's parent account currency.
Good luck...


On Sat, 16 Nov 2024 at 05:28, Mattia Rizzolo <mattia at mapreri.org> wrote:

> Hello people,
>
> For the first time since I started using gnucash 3+ years ago, I'm now
> shorting on a stock.  Nice how I refrained from excessive speculation
> for 3+ years hah!
>
>
> So, I started with
> Assets:Banks:USD +$1,274.26
> Assets:Investments:Stocks USD:TSLA 0
>
>
> And what is clear from my bank statements is:
>  * I sold 8 TSLA stocks for $326.71 each, tot 2,613.68, minus $3.94 fee,
>    so I have a +$2,609.74 in A:Banks:USD
>  * this is operating on a 45% margin, and shows a "margin amount" of
>    $1,176.16
>  * to cover the rest, apparently I borrowed 2,459.01 EUR according to
>    the statement, go figure what's that in USD
>  * this being a bank, they are not just happily loaning me shares
>    without any insurance, so I have a -$3,789.83 on my statement.  But
>    where is that number coming from? It looks suspiciously close to what
>    2,459.01 EUR + 1,176.16 USD would look like.
>  * it *seems* those 8 shares I borrowed for the operation are valued
>    $473.7295 each, total $3,565.57  — I'm seriously confused about where
>    that figure is coming from, but it's listed in the stock transactions
>    list with the note "lending".  (note: I get what short selling is all
>    about, I'm only confused about where that $473 figure comes from).
>
>
> At the end of it all, the bank gives me a balance of +$94.17 and -8
> shares.
>
>
> How do you recommend I record all of the above in gnucash?
>
> For long positions it's a fairly straightforward
>     Assets:Banks:USD  +$1234
>     Liabilities:Loans:Margin Trading:USD -$1234
>
>     Assets:Banks:USD  -$3456
>     Assets:Investments:Stocks USD:whatever +$3456
> But clearly it's not _that_ straightforward for shorts.
>
>
> Would people normally create a Liabilities accounts for the asset loan
> (with the counter-account being the regular stock account under Assets)?
> Or would you just let the A:I:Stocks account go negative while the
> position is open?
>
> And how do you even start recording the cash that has been loaned just
> to cover the position?
>
>
> If anybody is able to make heads and tails of this situation, I would
> really appreciate it!
>
> --
> regards,
>                         Mattia Rizzolo
>
> GPG Key: 66AE 2B4A FCCF 3F52 DA18  4D18 4B04 3FCD B944 4540      .''`.
> More about me:  https://mapreri.org                             : :'  :
> Launchpad user: https://launchpad.net/~mapreri                  `. `'`
> Debian QA page: https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mattia  `-
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