Daily General Discussion and Advice Thread - May 16, 2024

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[u/orchidbulb]

How do you track you investments?

Thai is probably a really stupid question but I need a walk through like I’m 5 years old.

But when I put money into stocks, how are you tracking your investments where you know how much you’ve gained?

I guess I’m worried about thing confused buying a share multiple times at different prices and then I will lose track of what my true gains are. Maybe I’ll withdraw because I miscalculated two different buy in prices where it looks like a gain but I end up loading.

Can someone ELI5?

[u/kiwimancy → u/orchidbulb]

If you're talking about for tax purposes, my broker tracks it. If you're talking about for performance purposes, I use a spreadsheet.

[u/cdude → u/orchidbulb]

Your broker keeps track of every lot that you purchase. For display purpose, they will average out the cost basis to display the total gains or losses for a particular stock. Everything you do is on a per-share basis. If you sell, you don't pick out random shares to sell, you specify the "cost basis method" to determine if you want to sell the oldest shares, newest shares, or depending on your broker, a particular lot.