M2004 SBE: Investment Gain way off

Hello, in my portfolio, the calculated gain for a particular stock is way
off. I even have the market value and cost basis columns side by side and
the difference between them isn't the value in the gain column! Note this
only happens for one particular stock, the rest are calculated correctly.
Something that might be relevant: The stock split a while back and all my
historical prices were retroactively updated with the "s" indicator after
the price. Thanks

via_newsgroup
Thu Apr 14 09:42:58 CDT 2005

In microsoft.public.money, JR wrote:

>Hello, in my portfolio, the calculated gain for a particular stock is way
>off. I even have the market value and cost basis columns side by side and
>the difference between them isn't the value in the gain column! Note this
>only happens for one particular stock, the rest are calculated correctly.
>Something that might be relevant: The stock split a while back and all my
>historical prices were retroactively updated with the "s" indicator after
>the price. Thanks

Are you accounting for dividends? If you want to ignore dividends,
you would want to use the Price Appreciation column rather than
gain.

Dividends are real money.

If this does not explain things, try posting numbers.

JR
Thu Apr 14 11:52:35 CDT 2005

Thanks for your reply. Yes there have been dividends which have been
reinvested (DRIP). The dividends are recorded as a deposit into cash,
followed by the purchase of additional shares that equal the divident
amount. To add a little humor to this problem, the stock in question is
MSFT.


> Are you accounting for dividends? If you want to ignore dividends,
> you would want to use the Price Appreciation column rather than
> gain.
>
> Dividends are real money.
>
> If this does not explain things, try posting numbers.
>
>
>

via_newsgroup
Thu Apr 14 12:09:16 CDT 2005

In microsoft.public.money, JR wrote:

>Thanks for your reply. Yes there have been dividends which have been
>reinvested (DRIP). The dividends are recorded as a deposit into cash,
>followed by the purchase of additional shares that equal the divident
>amount. To add a little humor to this problem, the stock in question is
>MSFT.

They had a substantial dividend late last year.

Normally a dividend would be entered as either a Dividend or a
ReinvestDividend into the Investment Transactions register, with the
cash going into the Cash Transactions register. That may be the way
you are already doing it.

ReinvestDividend combines a Dividend and a Buy into one transaction.



>
>
>> Are you accounting for dividends? If you want to ignore dividends,
>> you would want to use the Price Appreciation column rather than
>> gain.
>>
>> Dividends are real money.
>>
>> If this does not explain things, try posting numbers.
>>
>>
>>
>