KyMyMoney and Managing Your Stock Portfolio
 

I am moving from Quicken to KMyMoney. So far, I have not found a direct method of handling stock lots, cost basis, or unrealized grain/loss.

Tracking each purchase of a stock by "lots" is very valuable for determining profit/loss and whether the investment was long term or short term.

The "cost basis" of a stock is the purchase price plus any commissions or other charges. So if you buy a stock for $100 and pay $5, the cost basis is $105. If the stock is currently trading at $110 you have an unrealized gain of $5. Conversly, if the stock is trading at $95 you would have an unrealized loss of $10.

How have you used KMyMoney to tract this information?

Alternative approaches exist.
1. Store KMyMoney data in MySQL and use LibreOffice Base to access it.
2. Develop a "stand-alone" application with LibreOffice Base to access it.
3. Is there an ability in LibreOffice (or other program) to "read" KMyMoney data?

When you asked which finance program to use, I suggested Gnucash. Maybe I was right:
http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Concept_of_Lots

Thanks. This is one of those learning experiences that emerges as you gain experience with program. Based on the forum feedback that I had, it was 50/50 between GnuCash and KyMyMoney. For a while I was working with both KMyMoney and GnuCash.

GnuCash seemed to import the Quicken data better than KMyMoney. Also GnuCash allows for automatic stock price updates, but with KMyMoney, it is still manual. I was having a very difficult time setting up the investment accounts in GnuCash, including some other issues. My progress was slow. I finally got SimpleBackup to work reliably to an external USB flash drive that plugs into the router. (A priority project) The upgrade to Ubuntu 12.10 caused some significant problems. The issues with Ubuntu 12.10 seem to have been cleared-up now. As free-time permits, I might still experiment with GnuCash. It's been a learning experience.

Rainy day today. Finished reading the KMyMoney Manual.