You need to have negative units for commodities that give you a credit, and
positive for those that you pay for.
The only sensible way coming to mind is to decompose the combination into
its underlying puts / calls.
I'd make negative units = writing options (credit), positive = buying them
(debit)..
So if you were writing a put and buying another put to accomplish a bull
spread:
2020-12-28 * "Buy March 1 Bull spread 180/200 on HOOL"
Assets:Brokerage:Taxable:HOOL:Options -1 HOOL_PUT_200_2021_03_01 {1000
USD}
Assets:Brokerage:Taxable:HOOL:Options 1 HOOL_PUT_180_2021_03_01 {200
USD}
Assets:Brokerage:Taxable:Cash 800 USD
If you tried to represent combinations as a single commodity you'd have to
remember whether a net credit was expected for a particular kind of option.
Unless you're always doing the same kind of options trades, I'd prefer the
above convention that has easy to remember rules.
On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 9:18 PM Rajath Agasthya <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Yeah, I figured each option could be a new commodity. I don't do a lot of
> option trades, so I'm okay with having more commodities until something
> better turns up.
>
> The thing I'm not sure of is how to represent a trade where I'm getting a
> credit (from selling a put or even a short sale of a stock). I can't quite
> seem to figure out the matching posting for this transaction if I represent
> receiving credit as a posting into a cash account such as
> Assets:US:Schwab:Cash. Any thoughts on how to do this or an example you
> can share?
>
> Thanks!
> On Monday, December 28, 2020 at 5:04:37 PM UTC-8 [email protected] wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Dec 28, 2020 at 5:47 PM Rajath Agasthya <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> First of all, thanks to all the contributors (especially Martin) for
>>> this wonderful tool! I'm new to double entry accounting and Beancount, but
>>> I'm blown away at how simple yet powerful this tool is, especially when
>>> combined with Fava.
>>>
>>> I've been reading docs and I just started setting up my beancount file.
>>> But as I setup my investment account, I'm a little bit lost as to how I
>>> should manage option trades. The trades where there is a net debit is
>>> straightforward (I think), but I'm not sure how to enter trades like
>>> selling a covered call or a put or a spread/multi-leg option that result in
>>> a credit.
>>>
>>> Are there some examples I can refer to on how to manage option trades?
>>> The docs mention options trading as a future topic to be tackled and I
>>> unfortunately couldn't find anything in the mailing list (perhaps I didn't
>>> search properly). So if anyone can point me in the right direction, I would
>>> really appreciate it.
>>>
>>
>> I do options trading, but I only record simple options, never combos like
>> this.
>> - The option can be encoded in the symbol name. This makes a lot of new
>> commodities to declare and put out of commissions. I haven't yet figured
>> out what needs to be done to make this a bit nicer (e.g. allow user to
>> define a commodity regex/pattern for these).
>> - For stable asset types, I use leaf subaccounts; for options I don't
>> (would be too many accounts, and it feels silly to create an account for a
>> single position).
>> - For options combinations/"strategies", if you have some way to trade
>> all the legs instantly, you should be able to either (a) insert all the
>> individual legs and their prices in a single transaction, or, if the
>> product is already securitized by your broker, trade it like any other
>> product (one leg with the derivative instrument).
>>
>> Hope this helps, you do have to get a bit creative if you trade options,
>> but, well, you trade options, so you will be able to figure out something
>> :-)
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Rajath
>>>
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