capturing stock trades
Tim Docker
The ledger sample file shows 50 AAPL @ $30, but in that case it's
credited against "Equity", and the manual suggests that the Equity
account should be reserved for initial balances.
Should I have a new top level account for the market(ie different
to Equity,Assets,Income, and Expenses)? ie something like:
2004/05/01 * Investment balance
Assets:Brokerage 50 AAPL @ $30.00
Market:Stock
This doesn't feel quite right. What do others do? I guess the
approach would be the same for the purchase of any asset which
has ongoing value.
Also, is it possible to get the dollars paid and shared received
to go to separate sub accounts? I could do something like:
2004/05/01 * Investment balance
Assets:Stocks 50 AAPL @ $30.00
Assets:Stocks $1500
Assets:Trading Account $-1500
Market:Stock
but it seems messy to have to manually calculate the transfer
amount.
Any tips or pointers would be appreciated.
Tim
Tim Docker
entry only for AAPl - it doesn't affect the $. So it appears
you need to book the cashflow separately, and can hence refer
to a different account ie:
2004/05/01 * AAPL Purchase.
Market:Stocks
But I'm still interested in how others do this, and whether I need
to be manually calculating the total cash.
Tim
Vinod Kurup
Putting the commission into the 'AAPL' account allows for the realized
gain to be calculated properly.
The SELL transaction is more complicated, in order to make sure that
the gain or loss on the transaction gets captured into a 'Capital
Gains' account. It's easy enough for single buys and sells, but gets
hairy when you've had multiple buys (e.g. dollar cost averaging)
;; Transfer money to my brokerage
1998/05/01
Assets:Investments:Scottrade $1,000.00
Assets:Banking:Suntrust
;; Buy AAPL
1998/05/05 BUY AAPL
Assets:Investments:Scottrade:AAPL 10 AAPL @ $29.25
Assets:Investments:Scottrade:AAPL $14.95 ; commission
Assets:Investments:Scottrade
;; Sell AAPL
1999/08/16 SELL AAPL
Assets:Investments:Scottrade:AAPL -10 AAPL @ $29.25 ; buy price
Assets:Investments:Scottrade:AAPL 10 AAPL @ $60.375 ; sell price
Assets:Investments:Scottrade:AAPL -10 AAPL @ $60.375
Assets:Investments:Scottrade:AAPL $-14.95 ; buy commission
Income:Capital Gains:LT $14.98 ; sell
commission
Assets:Investments:Scottrade $588.77
Income:Capital Gains:LT
Hope that helps get you started...
Vinod
John Wiegley
> a stock purchase/sale. Is there a convention for this?
Yes, the typical convention is as follows:
2004/05/01 Stock purchase
Assets:Broker 50 AAPL @ $30.00
Expenses:Broker:Commissions $19.95
Assets:Broker $-1,500.00
This assumes you have a brokerage account that is capable of managed
both liquid and commodity assets. Now, on the day of the sale:
2005/08/01 Stock sale
Assets:Broker -50 APPL {$30.00} @ $50.00
Expenses:Broker:Commissions $19.95
Income:Capital Gains $-1,000.00
Assets:Broker $2,500.00
You can, of course, elide the amount of the last posting. I just put
it there for clarity's sake.
The {$30.00} is a lot price. You can also use a lot date,
[2004/05/01], or both, in case you have several lots of the same price/
date and your taxation model is based on longest-held-first.
John
Derek Mahar
> 2005/08/01 Stock sale
> Assets:Broker -50 APPL {$30.00} @ $50.00
> Expenses:Broker:Commissions $19.95
> Income:Capital Gains $-1,000.00
> Assets:Broker $2,500.00
> [2004/05/01], or both, in case you have several lots of the same price/
> date and your taxation model is based on longest-held-first.
or losses using different methods for cost calculation (average cost,
first-in-first-out (same as longest-held-first), last-in-first-out)?
Derek
John Wiegley
> Do you know of any other ledger related tools for computing the gains
> or losses using different methods for cost calculation (average cost,
> first-in-first-out (same as longest-held-first), last-in-first-out)?
Right now -- as with most things in the ledger world because it's about
reporting and not entering or modifying data -- you have to manually
specify exactly which past commodities you wish to sell. I think a GUI
on top of Ledger could do a good job of showing you which lots are
held, and allowing you to select an optimum set based on your desired
cost calculation. But the Ledger core does none of this.
John
Derek Mahar
> Right now -- as with most things in the ledger world because it's about
> reporting and not entering or modifying data -- you have to manually
> specify exactly which past commodities you wish to sell.
to sell or the date on which you bought those commodities or both?
What does ledger do if you specify neither? Must the cost be the
actual purchase price or can it be an average cost?
Since capital gains (or profit in general) is both an income entry and
a kind of report, might a ledger option compute these profit entries
on behalf of the user which the user could then use to replace the
original entries? Or, if the user leaves them out, might ledger
compute them automatically, similar to how it already automatically
balances a transaction by calculating the other side?
Derek
John Wiegley
> So you need to specify the original cost of the commodities you wish
> to sell or the date on which you bought those commodities or both?
You can specify one, both or none.
> What does ledger do if you specify neither?
Ledger itself doesn't actually know anything about commodities as
opposed to anything else you might trade. Depending on the
information you provide, it can generate reports which reflect that
info. If you don't provide it, it just won't come through in any
reports.
> Must the cost be the actual purchase price or can it be an average
> cost?
Must be the actual purchase price.
> Since capital gains (or profit in general) is both an income entry and
> a kind of report, might a ledger option compute these profit entries
> on behalf of the user which the user could then use to replace the
> original entries? Or, if the user leaves them out, might ledger
> compute them automatically, similar to how it already automatically
> balances a transaction by calculating the other side?
Ledger doesn't really do any automatic computation of this kind. That
would be the job of an external tool, which might then generate Ledger-
compatible transactions.
John
