Securities
I know securities are treated like accounts, but I'm confused about why some of the "properties" are kept locally at an account level vs globally at the security level.
Tools | Securities is where all securities show up and from there prices and splits can be added and these properties are set in the "Edit Security" dialog : Security ID, Security Name, Ticker, Prefix, Suffix, Max Decimal places, checkbox for show on summary page. All sensible enough choices.
But then there is another edit security button from within an investment account on the securities detail pane that lets you set additional settings; and my questions follow:
Broker & Phone Number: Shouldn't this be an account level setting? I suppose you can build an investment account with multiple securities from multiple brokers, but it seems like an obscure use case.
Cost Basis: I thought that legally you had to pick one or the other. How can you buy/sell a security using cost avg in one place and lot match the same security elsewhere. Ownership is the security regardless of where you get it from or even if it's paper or electronic.
For all the Type and subsequent cascade values. All of them cannot be different in different accounts. How does a single stock ticker have two different dividends amounts? Or be a Stock in one account and a CD in another account.
If you're tracking CD as a security, you're using an account number and therefore terms are unique.
Bonds, same deal. A particular bond will have the same terms no matter the account it is stored in.
Options as well. An option symbol won't have different exercise prices or exercise date in different accounts.
I would have expected these latter settings to be stored 'globally' with the security and not within an account level.
I'm sure there was a reason these choices were made as such, I'd just like to understand them better. It seems like the enforcement of certain settings is the responsibility of the user which is fine. Perhaps for more flexibility? Again, just trying to understand why, though I may add to the feature request list :)
tia
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1 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 07 Feb, 2023 08:32 PM
I can speak to cost basis. This needs to be per investment account, not set once on the security master.
I personally hold the same stock in different investment accounts and use LOT matching for some and average for others. Eg company stock options have to be LOT matched, whereas in a general investment account, they are average costing.
2 Posted by dwg on 07 Feb, 2023 09:56 PM
The broker you have outlined one use case but also think of mutual funds. You can have multiple master funds that may have investments n some of the same individual funds.
The Dividend amount is just a static bit of info, I'm not sure it is of any use and it is not used anywhere that I know of.
The type gets more nuanced and again think of funds. In one Investment account you may have them classified into broad groups like Fixed Interest, Shares, Property. In another fund you may say just have shares and could classify them as Domestic or International, or even classify them according to sectors like industrial, consume discretionary, food etc.
Flexibility is one of the key words as to where information is stored, and data is stored globally where it really could not and should not be anywhere else.