Personal version and day trader

[cindysdad]

Hi --
I'm wondering if the personal version would be suitable for me as a day trader. I average 4 to 6 round trips per day. And would quickly exceed the Max Investments in a Portfolio for the personal version, and eventually, a couple of years, the professional version as well.

Would it be possible for me to use the personal version? Perhaps by creating a new portfolio once per month? If so, could the portfolios be combined for tax purposes, reports, graphing, etc.?

Thanks for your help.
-- Keith

[Mark]

Hi Keith,

You could create separate portfolios, but you cannot combine them for reporting. Only 1 portfolio file can be open at a time. Just to be clear, the investment limit is a security limit, not a transaction limit. If you're going in/out of the same investment this is fine. Only when you create a new investment (INTC, IBM, etc) does this count towards the investment limit. You can have an unlimited number of transactions in each investment.

Another option may be to create a new portfolio file for each year, so you could get reporting on the whole year, and wouldn't need to combine separate portfolio files.

[cindysdad]

Mark --
Up until very recently I have been a position trader. And am just now starting to day trade. My first day-trading system scans all US common stocks, and then selects potential trades for the following day. My back testing of this system shows in excess of 600 trades for 2009, and more than 1000 trades for 2008. I haven't counted exactly how many different stocks are traded in a given year but from visual scanning it appears that any one stock is rarely traded more than once or twice in either year I tested.

I'm thinking that one possible solution would be to set up portfolios by quarter. Then export four Tax Reports in .csv format to excel. And combine totals there. Is this possible?

I use TurboTax every year for my taxes. Perhaps I could do the quarterlies as above and then export the four to .txf files, and have TurboTax combine them. Would you happen to know if TurboTax could handle that?

Thank you so much for your help on this. And on a Sunday too.
-- Keith

[Mark]

Hi Keith,

The problem with that is if you sell something in Q2 that you bought in Q1... You need to have both the opening/closing position available to get a correct capital gain on it.

Another possibility would be that you simply close old/closed positions out of Fund Manager. So, if you buy something, and then sell all of it, and you've already created a .TXF file for the gain/loss, you can now close it out of Fund Manager, and it won't count towards your limit anymore.

An easier solution may be to just upgrade to the Professional version, so you can have 2,000 open investments.

[cindysdad]

Mark --
If I stick with Personal version till I get close to the 500 limit and then decide to upgrade to Professional, will all my work from Personal transfer easily to Pro?

Thanks again.
-- Keith

[Mark]

Hi Keith,

Yes, it will. The data files are interchangeable between all 3 versions, so you can easily switch.

[cindysdad]

Mark --
You have been extremely helpful.
Major worry for me, solved in less than a day.
Thank you very much.
-- Keith