You're on the right track with your questions. Responses inline:
On Thursday, April 30, 2020 at 12:03:55 PM UTC-7, salmi...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> Thanks. Didn't get it yet but I have few questions.
>
> 1) After reading the doc it seems to me that I should specify which lots I
> sold by using {} syntax, am I right? When I sell a part of my position, my
> bank does not let me to select which lots I'll sell. So I have difficulty
> in understanding how to apply the lot's price to the transaction. Based on
> my bank's report I only know that I sold 20 shares. And to clarify I sold
> only a part of my total position.
>
If you bank does not let you select (STRICT booking, aka "specific
identification of shares" in the US), it's possible they picked lots to
sell using FIFO, LIFO, average cost, or some other method. I'm not familiar
with the laws that apply to you, but you could either research this or
back-work it out by asking your bank the value of the gains you realized in
that transaction, if they are required by law to maintain that.
> 2) Is the booking method (strict, fifo, lifo, average, none) somehow
> relevant in this and if so, what implications each one has? Since I can't
> manage which lots I sell from by bank, to me it seems like it would make
> sense to use average method. Or is this completely unrelated to my problem?
>
Yes, this is very related to your problem. If you're sure it's not FIFO or
LIFO, then it's likely AVERAGE. However, average cost booking is not yet
implemented
<https://xuhcc.github.io/beancount-docs/11_how_inventories_work.html#average-booking>
fully in Beancount. The simple hack is to use the NONE
<https://xuhcc.github.io/beancount-docs/11_how_inventories_work.html#no-booking>
booking method. You can also simulate
<https://xuhcc.github.io/beancount-docs/19_trading_with_beancount.html#average-cost-booking>
AVERAGE.
> 3) In the example transaction you gave I don't understand the point of the
> Income row. I sold 20 shares with price 47.996 EUR, and in return I had to
> pay 15 EUR commissions and I got 944.92 EUR to my Cash account. While this
> transaction would likely result in capital gain or loss, I don't understand
> how I would calculate that when I don't know the prices of lots I sold.
> Again I guess this is just a result of my confusion with the first question.
>
This gets into what you're trying to do, and what your tax laws require you
to do. If you aren't required to report the gains (eg: tax sheltered
accounts in the US are like this), you setting the booking method to NONE
<https://xuhcc.github.io/beancount-docs/11_how_inventories_work.html#no-booking>
is a quick hack if you don't care about recording the gains for yourself.
As Martin notes: *"Note: If you are familiar with Ledger, this is the
default and only booking method that it supports."* So while it's one way
of doing things, one of the things that made me move to Beancount from
Ledger was booking methods beyond NONE.
> Finally I'm not shorting and this is the first transaction I'm selling
> this ETF so afaik the balance should not be negative in any part of the
> ledger as seems to be the case in some other threads. Anyway, I'll try to
> keep reading and figuring out what I should do.
>
Your sale got counted as a short position. Your subsequent purchase was
assumed to be a short-closing transaction, and beancount attempted to match
it against your sale.
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