Tabs and Terminology in Investments Section

[Gregg Nemas]

On Sun, Jan 5, 2020 at 3:54 AM Thomas Baumgart <thb at net-bembel.de> wrote:
>
> Gregg,
>
> On Sonntag, 5. Januar 2020 02:18:36 CET Gregg Nemas wrote:
>
> > In KMyMoney 5.0.6, clicking on the Investments icon on the left brings
> > up a window with two tabs. The first tab, "Equities" is documented in
> > the KMyMoney Handbook, but the second tab, "Securities", is not, as
> > far as I can tell.
> >
> > https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/extragear-office/kmymoney/details.investments.securities.html
> >
> > In fact, the Handbook states "An Investment Account holds a collection
> > of Securities, also referred to as Equities", which makes these two
> > tabs confusing to me.
> >
> > https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/extragear-office/kmymoney/details.investments.html
> >
> > From experimentation, it seems the two tabs are almost the same,
> > except the second one is not filtered by account. Is that correct?
>
> Almost, you are right. In fact, both show different details.
>
> Referring to the manual at
>
> https://docs.kde.org/stable5/en/extragear-office/kmymoney/makingmostof.html#makingmostof.basicaccounting
>
> I try to explain the difference along with a small demo file attached to this mail.
>
> Looking at the full expanded accounts view of the demo file, you see that I created three portfolios (e.g. each at a different bank) and named them  test1..test3. These are known as investment accounts to KMyMoney.
>
> Each such portfolio can contain one ore more sub-accounts called equity accounts. Regarding the basic accounting chapter these equity accounts are the buckets the beans are counted in. Each such equity account is denominated in a specific security (e.g. red or green beans) and since the price in a real currency (trading currency) may differ between red and green beans you keep them as separate securities. Analogous, a checking account will be denominated in a currency, so the currency is the security of the checking account.
>
> Switching to the Investment view's equity tab, you select between the three investment accounts and see the details of the sub-accounts (equities). Since you look at the buckets, you get the amount of beans in each (quantity), their current/latest price and the calculated value. If you switch between the accounts (test1..test3) you see the different quantities and values of the securities in each. I used some arbitrary numbers here.
>
> You can see that test1 and test2 contain a single equity in a different security each and test3 contains two different securities (which are identical to the ones in test1 and test2).
>
> Looking at the security tab gives you an overview of all the securities. The attributes of the securities are shown but no amounts. Even you have three investment accounts and four equities you only need two securities since the securities are shared between the equities.
>
> I hope this clarifies it a bit and makes sense. If you think you can improve the manual please feel free to send us an update. The content as simple text would be enough, we take care of formatting and including.
>
>
> Regards
>
> Thomas
>

Thomas,

Thanks for the explanation and the sample file. It is what I
suspected. The "Securities" tab is a a list of all securities held in
any account, while the "Equities" tab is the current holdings for each
account. I think maybe "Holdings" might have been a better name for
the tab than "Equities".

Thanks,

Gregg