Hi Martin, Long-time lurker, first-time poster... I added some comments to the document as a starting point - hope I did it right!
I have a decent amount of experience with the treatment of corporate actions - would love to contribute. Kind regards, Simon On Sunday, September 13, 2020 at 2:02:45 AM UTC-4 [email protected] wrote: > Moving to: > > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SC_q_t8TkLdPxglb2qcpG8q4wVe0VP-XU35FTI0ICRA/edit?usp=sharing > > > On Sun, Sep 13, 2020 at 12:44 AM Martin Blais <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Right now, Beancount does nothing about stock splits (nor does it know >> about them either). >> >> You either (a) keep the same symbol and have a discontinuity in the price >> series, or (b) switch to a new symbol and have two sets of prices. I've >> been tending toward (a) in recent years, but in the past had used (b) -- >> the extra symbol bothers me. Hasn't been much of a problem so far (though I >> invest mostly in baskets so I only have relatively few of them). >> >> The price fetchers return adjusted prices for historical prices. For >> example, if you fetch a historical price for day X before a split, the >> price returned for day X will be different if you fetch it before or after >> the split (you have to be careful with that). It's not pretty and could >> lead to errors. Even with correct recording of prices on the split date it >> could be tricky, e.g., a trade that posts the day before a split and >> settles a day after it. >> > > > >> >> I haven't been too concerned with errors around split dates before, but >> now with my recent work on computing returns, I'm having to pay a bit more >> attention to that, and as I'm adding price plots I'm finding some small >> errors in my input file if I look for info around splits. >> >> Has anyone done some thinking around how they'd like to see stock splits >> handled? >> Obviously we cannot change the numbers in the input file itself, but I'm >> curious to hear if people have expectations or some clear idea about what >> they'd like to see in a PTA system. >> >> Some quickly jotted down ideas: >> - Checking for discontinuity in the price series to highlight errors (as >> a script, probably). >> - Adding explicit directives to record split information, and requiring >> price directives on that date. >> - Internally associating version numbers with price points based on >> splits and having operations on them which take those into account. >> >> Not so sure how to go about it yet, I'm just starting to look into this. >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/2312f29d-baef-45cb-8007-ea46172445b4n%40googlegroups.com.
