Max Number of Investments

[tj4ice]

Hello,

I've been using FM personal edition for the past year and am pleased with the product. I've encountered my 1st problem and am looking for some guidance on the feature of "close" positions.

Last week when I was doing my usual import of transactions from IB I encountered the message " Max number of investments currently open".
So, I right-clicked on some positions in a sub-portfolio that were already sold and hit "close". This seemed to clear a few trades for me to import from IB. I recieved the same message this week of max investments currently open so I had to close some more trades. I must be at the 500 limit on FM personal edition.

My question is before I "close" trades I am no longer in, how does this effect the historical graph performance of the portfolio and reports? If I start "close" positions will they still show up in the FIFO report at the end of year?

Any guidance appreciated,

Tony

[Mark]

Hi Tony,

When you close an investment, you are removing it from your portfolio. It is no longer included in any graph or report. It will not be in your capital gains report, or any historical performance metric. In general, you do not want to close investments for this reason. Instead, you would normally 'hide' them once you no longer own them, as described here:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/faq_hide_sold.php

Have you actually traded in over 500 different investments? For example, if you bought/sold the same stock multiple times, you would normally put all these transactions in the same investment, rather than creating a new investment. If however, you are buying/trading different stocks/funds, then you do need a new investment for each one. If you really have traded in over 500 unique stocks/funds you may want to consider upgrading to the Professional version, which allows 2,000 investments as a maximum.

[tj4ice]

Mark,

Seeing I'm tracking my option trades along with my stocks I do believe I have reached 500 trades due to the different symbols for each strike price.


"if you bought/sold the same stock multiple times, you would normally put all these transactions in the same investment, rather than creating a new investment."

I have been doing this when the transactions in the same investment are in the same sub-portfolio. I'm tracking 4 sub-portfolios, an options account,a retirement account and 2 stock accounts using different trading strategies. So, I probably have a handful of stocks that fell into different sub-portfolio. In this case I have the transactions as a new investment. Does that make sense and is it the most effecient way?

Tony

[Mark]

Hi Tony,

I see... I can see how they would add up when trading options. It does sound like you are doing it fine, and in an efficient way.

[tj4ice]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for the quick response, much appreciated.

Tony