Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Tracking investments with manual pricing

If I have an investment that doesn't have pricing information available in any on-line service, can I still track it by just updating current pricing periodically somewhere (and if so where), or is this tool really only good at tracking investments that have pricing information that can be obtained from a service like yahoo? I couldn't see how I could enter an investment and just enter pricing manually.

Comments

  • Yes, you can! I have shares in a private company not listed on any stock exchange. Here are the steps you need to follow:
    1) You will need to create a name. Let's assume you gave it a symbol, ABC
    2) You will need to list ABC in srcSymbol tab just like any other symbol
    3) You will need to assign it a sector, sensitivity, etc. just like any other symbol
    4) You can buy, sell, etc. in the srcTrans tab
    5) You should NOT list it in psConfig.txt
    6) Create a folder called "Manual Quotes" inside the "Quotes" folder
    7) Create a text file _ABC_ in the "Manual Quotes" folder (change text file name based on your chosen symbol)
    8) Add entries in the following format. There needs to be at least one entry per month.
    YYYY-MM-DD,10.00,ABC (where 10 is the price per share)
    9) Save the file
    10) Run the scripts and refresh the workbook and you should see the symbol in the reports!

    * The first entry must be the MinDate chosen in src tab. My min date is 2012-12-31. Therefore, my first entry is 2012-12-31,10.00,ABC

    I hope that helps!
  • Hey thanks for your detailed explanation.
    I have a question. What if my first entry is not my min date?
    What if my min date is 2020-12-31 and I bought this says 2021-1-31.?
  • trishaan,

    The min date is used to enter your existing symbol holdings. In many reports, first month is excluded from historic performance calculations, as this would skew results.
    Let's say you bought MSFT in 2010 for 50$ per share and you enter this as your first transaction in 2020-12-31 with the price of 50$ as you want to maintain a cost basis, but the next day price is 120$, so it would appear that price jumped in one day by 70$ and that would be a huge profit.
    If you bought your symbol on 2021-01-31, then simply use that date for your transactions as the cost basis for that transaction will be "true" - that is cost basis is exactly what the price of the symbol was that day.
Sign In or Register to comment.