Check out the section on trading in the docs.
You can choose a booking method, e.g. FIFO, or do it manually (if you use
the "specific lot identification" method).
One trick that works well when doing by is to run bean-doctor to get the
context around a transaction, it gives you the contents of the account just
before the transaction with the individual lots and you can just select the
ones you want to reduce and copy-paste them.
If you specify a booking method it does it for you; you can use bean-doctor
context to view the selected lots in the same way.
Hope this helps,
On Sat, Nov 18, 2023 at 3:44 AM Matthias Beyer <m...@beyermatthias.de>
wrote:
> Hi Blais,
> Hi beancount list,
>
> I am a long term beancount user but only lately got into how to work with
> beancount and stock trading.
>
> I moved my stock trades from "normal syntax", like:
>
> 2023-11-18 * "Buy some"
> Assets:Stock +10 COOLSTOCK @ 10 EUR
> Assets:Bank:Account -105 EUR
> Expenses:Commissions
>
> to the appropriate one
>
> 2023-11-18 * "Buy some"
> Assets:Stock +10 COOLSTOCK {10 EUR}
> Assets:Bank:Account -105 EUR
> Expenses:Commissions
>
> because I just recently learned about how to actually use beancount for
> stock
> trading.
>
> Now, my issue is that I buy ETF for a rather long time now, recurringly
> (each
> months 1st). That means that there are a lot of postings for ETFs. I know
> about the (experimental) "recurring" plugin, but I assume that this won't
> work
> here because of the everchanging prices.
> Either way, I wouldn't actually use that plugin, because I auto-import
> transactions from my bank account and would need to filter out
> transactions
> that are already done by a recurring order.
>
> But that aside, my question is about something different actually: Do I
> move my
> ETF postings from the first syntax (from above) to the second? It is not
> that
> this is quite some effort (vim scripting ftw) but rather that it becomes
> quite
> complex once I sell ETF again, right? Because I would essentially "match"
> my
> ETF against the buying orders, although I probably do not sell the exact
> same
> amount that I bought order-by-order!
>
> E.G.
>
> * buy 100 EUR worth of ETF at 10
> * buy 100 EUR worth of ETF at 11
> * buy 100 EUR worth of ETF at 12
> * buy 100 EUR worth of ETF at 13
> * buy 100 EUR worth of ETF at 14
> * buy 100 EUR worth of ETF at 15
> * buy 100 EUR worth of ETF at 16
> ... years pass
> Now I have to sell. ETF is at 50 now and I want to have 100 out of it
> every
> transaction.
> So what I do now is
> * sell 100 EUR worth of ETF that I bought at 10
>
> The first 5 transactions of this work perfectly well... because the amount
> I
> bought at 10 is now worth 500 of my currency. But after that I have to
> sell
> <some fraction> of what I bought at 11 to get out 100 and for the last bit
> of
> what I bought at 11 I also have to sell some fraction of what I bought at
> 12
> to get out 100 of my currency. And this gets even more complex in
> real-life
> because the ETF of course does not stay at 50 during my time that I am
> selling, but is still moving in price and also because/if I do not want to
> get
> out 100 but, say, 550 of my currency...
>
> Does my logic check out?
>
> Is there any "simple" solution to that? I can totally see the benefit of
> actually doing that calculation! It's just that I am looking for a less
> complex alternative to not burden my future self with work that might be
> unnecessary! :-)
>
> I am really looking forward to your answer!
> Thank you very much for beancount!
> Have a great weekend,
> best from Germany
> Matthias
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