Personal Finance & Money Asked by bessarabov on December 9, 2020
I want to find out how to calculate stock average price. I understand how to calculate average when you are buying shares, but I’m not exactly sure how to calculate the average when you sell shares.
Here is an example:
(10 + 3*12) / 4
)Before selling, I’ve got 4 shares of ABCD:
I can imagine several ways to calculate average:
Or maybe there is some other algorithm.
So the question is: what is the industry standard for calculating the portfolio average?
Yes - there are many ways to calculate an average depending on how you roll the sales back into the price of the stock.
The convention is that you only average the purchase price, while any gains or losses you receive from sales are not rolled back into the purchase price but counted separately as gains and losses.
On Day 4 your average price is the same as it was on Day 2, still $11.50 per share. The sales on day 3 resulted in a gain of $3.50 per share using the average cost basis method.
Tax Rules
Where this sometimes gets complex is when it comes time to calculate your Schedule D for your (US) tax return. How much profit did you make on the transaction? You can use three different accounting methods: FIFO, Average Cost, or sell by ID (or more if your broker offers other options or algorithms).
Answered by xirt on December 9, 2020
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