Transferring Short Stock Position btwn Accounts

[dok902]

Hello,

I am having trouble transferring a short stock position from one account to another -- the position transfer wizard is rejecting my request, stating that I need to specify a positive number of shares to transfer. How can I transfer these short positions? I don't want to just do a transfer out in one account and a transfer in (as 2 separate transactions) in both accounts, as then I will lose my cost basis information, etc.. Please let me know how to achieve this.

Thanks!

[Mark]

Hi dok902,

The "Transfer Between Wizard" does not currently support handling transferring short positions. This would be good to add in a future update. For now, you can do it manually by recording a transfer out, and then also a transfer in. When you record the transfers you can enter your cost basis, so you will not lose it.

[dok902]

Thanks Mark. Any idea when this will be implemented? As an active trader, i have lots of orders for small lots (100-share lots at a time), so it's impractical for me to make the transfer entries manually. And this is preventing me from setting up my accounts in the meantime... Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi dok902,

Why are you having to "transfer" these shares often? Usually this is only necessary when moving to a new account, establishing new positions, or something like this. If you're actively trading, this is just normally buy/sell transactions.

I cannot give you a date on when this will be implemented. It will not be in the real near future though.

[dok902]

Sorry, I should have been clear. I am not transferring the shares often. I meant that I have lots of 100-share orders from different dates, and when i transferred accounts I wanted all of them to move over to the new account while retaining their cost basis characteristics, etc.. The position transfer wizard works great for the long position transfers, but for the shorts it doesn't work very well to do a transfer in and transfer out. The reason is that I want to be able to use the graphs to show position cost vs value, etc. and if i just transfer a new position in where the cost basis is below the market value the graphs will show a kink as though all of a sudden new profit appeared in the account. That's the issue I'm trying to avoid. Please let me know if I am missing some other way to get around this.

Thanks!

[Mark]

Hi dok902,

You can do the exact same thing using a combination of Transfer In and Transfer Out transactions as you can do with the "Transfer Between" wizard. All the wizard is doing is creating these Transfer In/Out transactions for you, which can be very helpful when you have many purchases in an investment to transfer. If you only have 1 open lot it is not much of a benefit. When you record the Transfer In, you will see there is a place to enter the Out Of Pocket cost, Tax Basis date/cost, and also the Market Value. This way you can maintain your current basis information from the existing investment you are transferring from. If you record the "Transfer Out" first, that dialog will display your Out Of Pocket (OOP) cost basis and tax cost basis for you, so you can use that info in the Transfer In dialog.

The graphs that plot cost basis are plotting Out Of Pocket (OOP) cost basis, so by entering this value correctly into the Transfer In dialog, you can control what is plotted as your cost basis.