Average cost error

I have a strange thing happening with average cost. I bought 20 shares in Shearer to depart in 2013 at a cost of .6000. The next day in my portfolio, the average cost of the shares show as .4490. And with the price around .58 it was showing a nice profit so I listed to sell them - at .6000. The point is that having an incorrect average cost column is misleading with potentially disastrous results.

At the time I had no Shearer to depart shares though I have shorted in this stock previously.I know the average cost goes totally screwy if you're repeatedly trading on a single stock, I have a few that say I paid less than 0 for a stock and sadly one that says I paid more than 1 (PM Liberal 2013 before Rudd regained the leadership). No doubt the same fault is affecting the average cost display here. Though previous discussions have minimised the problem, lets face it - this is a fault and I reckon it's time to fix this pretty important feature.

Hi Milosevic

The Avg. Cost Figure on the My Portfolio page reflects the average costs of the current stock you hold against your total lifetime trading of the stock, not just the average cost of the current stock you hold.

For example if you purchased 10 stock at 80 cents, then sold those stock for 40 cents, then bought 10 more stock for 50 cents the average cost would be 90 cents, even though the most recent stock were purchased at 50 cents.

Thanks for the reply.

I think the average cost should just be for the price paid without any losses or profits. We sort of have that already in the loss/gain column which disappears once you've cleared a stock. I find the average cost becomes irrelevant once it goes screwy, as it does after a cover.

Also the average cost should be reset once you've cleared a stock, so that any future figures are accurate.

If you want to provide an overall average loss or gain over the lifetime of a stock, then it should be a separate column altogether, perhaps in the History page. It would be cool to have a list of profit/losses in a stock once it's been cleared, but at the moment this average cost column doesn't really give that.

Thanks.

Am I the only one that likes the way the average cost currently works once I actually understood it! lol

any other way of keeping average cost tends to be quite complicated (and lose value) when you really think of how it would have to work