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At 12:20 PM -0400 9/16/98, Scott wrote:
>I'd like to pose a general trading question to the list concerning ideas
>and opinions of software and/or methods members are using to keep track of
>trades (stocks or otherwise) throughout the year for P/L tracking, ROI,
>tax accounting purposes, etc. I've heard of folks using a program called
>Captools and also Excell and MS-Money/Quicken. Any feedback?
I use Quicken. There are several problems with the version I use. (I
haven't updated to the latest version since I usually wait a while for the
inevitable bug fixes on each new version.)
It will not properly keep track of multiple trades in one day. In fact, the
reports give serious errors if you try to use the "lot tracking" feature in
such cases. Intuit admits that this is the case but apparently has not
considered fixing it a priority. (I understand that this is not fixed in
the latest version.)
It does not properly handle short sales. To get it to properly report the
gain of short sales on the Capital Gains Report, you need to make several
extra entries to make it think they are two trades. Very confusing. (Not
fixed in the current version.)
The second, and fairly minor issue, is that it doesn't understand that an
option reflects 100 shares. This is easy to work around by just multiplying
all quantities by 100.
Other than that it does OK and the integration with my other financial
transactions is a convenience.
Bob Fulks
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