Investments in stocks

xnitinx

Member
Hi !
Is there an option in iCash where I can track my investments in stocks?
I want to manage different stocks and average cost price, total quantity etc.

Is there a plan for this feature in near future ?
 

ElPato

New Member
Sorry to dig out this post again...

My solution to this is like following:
- Under "Accounts" I created a new category "Reference Accounts", which act as the reference account each trader get's at his broker of choice.
- Within "Reference Accounts" category for each broker I have an account I create an account for it (like "DEGIRO" for degiro.de, or "flatex" for flatex.at, and so on...)

- For each stock I'm trading I do the following:
-- create a new currency ("ST1", "ST2", and so on), in the currency description I put the ISIN of that stock (like "US1912161007") and set the initial value to it's current price
-- create an account (like "Coca Cola"), as currency I set the previously added currency (which should reflect the stock value)

- When I'm trading a stock it's the following:
-- Add a transaction from the reference account to the specific stock
-- In the "Rate" field I put the actual price I payed for each stock
-- (optionally) add another transaction from that reference account to "Bank Charges" if there are any transaction fees

I think this is the most real mapping of reality, as the value of each stock account reflects the amount of stocks you really own by that company (or share of ETF or whatever you're trading).

More tricky part will be the Reporting of Balance over time (as this should include the variance of stock price over time - which currently I cannot see).

-----
It would just be nice if those "stock currencies" are updated for their given ISIN (can be looked up at some various stock-tickers. It wouldn't even be a huge change to the functionality that's already available.

The Report functionality ("Balance Sheet" over time, Balance-Charts), as mentioned, is more tricky - but I would prioritise it a little more down (not saying that I don't need it).

The Scheduling functionality should be adopted too, as when adding a scheduled transaction (for a saving plan, which is a automated transaction each month or so) is properly shown at the source account, but in the target account (the stock itself) it just shows the amount of the scheduled transaction (not taking account of the different currency - but this is an existing issue for scheduling foreign exchange accounts).
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If there's no feature coming in the near future I'm going to write my own script that updates the currency value for those "stock currencies".
 

ElPato

New Member
And I need to say... I'm using 7.5.9-US, where currencies get updated when you open a iCash file... Then it sets all of those unknown "stock currencies" to zero-value, which is pretty annoying...

(isn't this a bug though? what if I want to track BitCoin-, LiteCoin- or some other unknown currency-account with iCash?)
 

ElPato

New Member
Well, I've seen that BitCoin is listed at Yahoo. Okay.

But what about the behaviour of setting the value of a currency to zero when it's not found?

And what about using stocks as currencies? (I know, this would be a different Feature-Request - but imho a simple way to support stocks)
 

ElPato

New Member
And unfortunately I can't set an ISIN as currency symbol, because they have more than three characters...
 

stanbusk

Administrator
Staff member
Ok so what is your request? What about a setting in each currency window where you can set if you want iCash to fetch updates or not? More that 3 characters for the code? How much? I can add those 2 things, this is not a problem.

About inserting stocks in the currencies panel, I believe we should create a Stocks Window, I believe it is something that has been requested many times.

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ElPato

New Member
I will wireshark/tcpdump the request/response to yahoo to see if it's even possible... If not it's not needed to add more characters to currency symbol.
 

ElPato

New Member
A regular currency update in iCash is as follows:
Request to Yahoo (download.finance.yahoo.com):
Code:
GET /d/quotes.csv?s=EURDKK=X&f=sl1d1t1ba&e=.csv HTTP/1.0
Response from Yahoo:
Code:
"EURDKK=X",7.4344,"1/13/2017","1:53pm",7.4344,7.4349

Now, let's assume we have an ETF like "iShares MSCI World Dist" (ISIN: "IE00B0M62Q58.IR") iCash would need to set following request to yahoo (additional c4 flag for symbol currency):
Code:
GET /d/quotes.csv?s=IE00B0M62Q58.IR&f=sl1d1t1bac4&e=.csv
The response would be:
Code:
"IE00B0M62Q58.IR",35.5600,"10/21/2015","8:00pm",N/A,N/A,"USD"

iCash would then have the stock value and the currency which it is traded (it can then translate the stock value to the base currency iCash is using - in this example USD->EUR)

No massive development needed there to have stocks supported by using Accounts with "special currencies"...
 

ElPato

New Member
Hi, again!

I made some progress here... It is possible to track resource investments, like gold, silver, palladium... As these symbols (XAU, XAG, ...) can be combination with the base currency symbol (EUR).

Stock symbols on the other hand would need to change a little bit of behaviour, as iCash must not combine that symbol with the base currency. Let me show you the example:

- iShares MSCI World
-- Symbol: IQQW.DE

You can get the value of one share with that symbol, but not with "IQQW.DEEUR" (as a combination)

The underlying currency of the symbol has to be known (and would be nice if the user can set it manually):
- IQQW.DE -> EUR (iShares MSCI World)
- NESN.VX -> CHF (Nestlé)
- KO -> USD (The Coca-Cola Company)

Can I support you somehow for building that portfolio-/stock-mgmt?

Just my 2 cents...
 

ElPato

New Member
Hi, Stan!

Sorry to warm up this old thread, but are there any news on stock- / crypto-mgmt functionality?

Best regards,
Ronald
 

stanbusk

Administrator
Staff member
I will have a look. Note that this kind of service is quite new, I mean the available APIs to access exchange data
 
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