Reports: "Investment Display" option for watchlists

[Djobydjoba]

Hi Mark,

I have some sub-portfolios that correspond to accounts, and some sub-portfolios for watchlists. That is, for the latter, they contain investments with no transactions. They are used to monitor and analyze (in particular with custom reports) the financial markets worldwide.

So because of this two types of sub-portfolios, I have frequently to change the option in the "Investment Display" section of the Report Preferences dialog.

For account sub-portfolios, I would like to set the "Do Not Display Investments with Zero Share Balance" to "On Ending Report date " or "Over Entire Report Date Range".

But for watchlist sub-portfolios, of course it is needed to set this same option to "Never (show all investments)", because otherwise no investments are shown (because no transactions).

So, because it is tedious to always change this option depending on the selected sub-portfolio, I mainly leave this option to "Never (show all investments)", but thus I have unwanted investments displayed in my reports when it is an account subportfolio.

I think adding another option "Always show all investments for portfolios with no transactions (watchlists)" would permit to suit both cases.

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When "Do Not Display Investments with Zero Share Balance" is set to "Never (show all investments)", this option would not be shown.

When "Do Not Display Investments with Zero Share Balance" is set to "On Ending Report date " or "Over Entire Report Date Range", this option would become activable to make an exception for watchlist portfolios.

Thanks!

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Understood, thanks for the feedback.

You probably already know this, but the other way you can have more control over this is to use the "hidden" attribute of your investments. For investments in your accounts that you no longer own, mark them as hidden. For investments in your watchlists that you want to see, don't mark them as hidden. You can use the "File / File Operations / Hide Sold Investments..." command to help with this, and run it differently for accounts versus watchlists. You can then leave the report preference set to "Never (show all investments)", and only rely on the hidden attribute to control whether investments are shown/hidden in reports. We have a tutorial on using hidden investments.

[Djobydjoba]

Yes indeed. I already use the hidden attribute for investments I no longer own, and for watchlists I don't mark them as hidden. I typically don't show the hidden investments but only to unhide an investment. But:

- for investments I frequently buy / sell, or for investments I'm about to buy, I often let them unhidden, as a kind of reminder of the imminente purchase I plan to make. Too, I often like to keep unhidden for a while the investments I sold recently, to see how they behave, and if it was a good idea to sold, if I shouldn't repurchase.
Managing too actively the hidden attribute can be a bit tedious, and in fact even counter-productive.

- This doesn't address a part of the problem. If you leave the report preference set to "Never (show all investments)", use the hidden attribute for investments no longer owned and don't show the hidden investments, then - for account portfolios - the currently owned investments (so with the hidden attribute off) are constantly displayed on the report, even if not owned at the date of the report. So this is a problem.

With the current available options it seems there is no way to handle very well accounts and watchlists at the same time, so the suggestion to add the additional option.

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Okay, understood, thanks for the feedback/idea.