Gold & Silver Portfolios

[Slicerman]

Is there a way to track gold & silver purchases in FM?

[Mark]

Hi Slicerman,

You can track any investment type you want. If you bought silver/gold in some form that has a per-share price, record it such that you record the price per share paid, and the total value. Assuming you just paid a certain amount of money, and don't know the share price, keep the price fixed at $1, like a cash investment. The value would equal to the shares. If you want to periodically update the value of the investment, record a reinvested distribution for the change in market value of whatever you bought. For example, if you paid $1,000 for some chunk of gold, record a buy of 1,000 shares for $1,000 and a price of $1. If that chunk of gold is later worth $1,200, record a reinvested distribution for $200, 200 shares, and a price of $1.

[Slicerman]

I don't think that your answer was what I was hoping for. I was hoping that FM would be able to track all my sales or purchases of bullion metals & maintain a running total of each bullion metal that I own(in ounces). And that FM would be able to download, from some internet site, the historical daily prices of each metal & then apply those prices to my bullion totals to come up with the current value of my bullion totals. I guess what I want is not to have to make this adjustments manually. If you can do this with stocks or mutual funds, why can't it be done with bullion totals. It seems to me, all it is multiplying the bullion's total ounces with the its day ending price for that bullion and keeping a running total of it's value. Am I missing something?

[Mark]

Hi Slicerman,

Yes, you can do this. Just record your purchases, where the shares are equal to the ounces you bought. Retrieve the current prices from Bloomberg, using their symbols for the price of gold/silver ounces. For example, the price of an ounce of gold uses their symbol:

XAUUSD:CUR

and silver is:

XAGUSD:CUR

You can set your quote server globally to Bloomberg under "Options / Internet Settings...", or to only use if for these investments, set these investments to use this server under "Investment Properties... / Internet Retrieve".