I asked John about the difference between -B and -I on IRC. I'm
moving the conversation to the list because John went to dinner and
I'm about to go to sleep and because other folks might find this
interesting as well.
22:51 < tbm> johnw: what's the difference between -B and -I? You say -I "this
is the same as the cost if none specified" what does "none specified" refer to?
22:51 < johnw> if you say: 10 AAPL {$10} @ $20
22:51 < johnw> -B reports $200
22:51 < johnw> -I reports $100
22:51 < johnw> the corresponding value expression values are:
22:51 < johnw> amount = 10 AAPL
22:51 < johnw> price = $10
22:51 < johnw> cost = $20
22:52 < johnw> aka, $10 was the price of AAPL on that day, but $20 is what it
cost you to get them
22:53 < tbm> isn't it the other way around? $20 was the price on that day, $10
what it cost to get them
I thought some more about what John said and my question and it seems
that my last comment was wrong. As John said, $10 is the price of
AAPL on that day and for some reason you spent $20 to buy something
that has a price of $10. So the price is $10 but your cost is $20.
(I'm not sure if there is a valid use scenario for this; it obviously
makes sense when selling things, though).
There are two things I don't understand:
1) I put John's example into a ledger file as follows:
2012-03-17 * Test
A 10 AAPL {$10} @ $20
B -$200
but this doesn't balance. ledger expects the following:
2012-03-17 * Test
A 10 AAPL {$10} @ $20
B -$100
I don't understand this. If I'm buying 10 AAPL at $20 each, surely I
should spend $200.
I can fix this up by accounting for the capital loss made when buying
something worth $100 for $200:
2012-03-17 * Test
A 10 AAPL {$10} @ $20
B -$200
Expenses:Capital loss $100
But still... that seems strange to me. Normally you make a capital gain
or less when selling something. If you buy something worth $100 for
$200 then imho you don't incur a capital loss immediately... only when
you actually sell it for $200. But maybe I'm wrong on this. I'd have
to check what the various accounting standards say.
In any case, is there actually a use scenario for this?
2) Anyway, the more important question is this:
John gave the example of 10 AAPL {$10} @ $20 and said that $10 is the
price and $20 the cost.
But is this always true? Is the amount in {} always the price and the
amount after @ the cost? This seems exactly opposite to what I would
expect when selling something.
Let's say I have 1 AAPL which I bought at $10 and now I sell it for $20.
I'd say:
Assets:Investments -1 AAPL {$10.00} @ $20.00
What is the price and what the cost? Is $10 really the price and $20 the
cost according to ledger? I'd expect the exact opposite. ledger -B shows
$-20 while -I shows $-10.
But surely the cost was $10 and the price $20...
-B stands for cost basis and the cost basis is what I paid for
something, not what I received for it.
Can someone enlighten me?
By the way, I'm asking these questions because of bug 713:
http://bugs.ledger-cli.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713
--
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/
