Can Avg Cost be used instead of FIFO?

Ideas 💡
1

The gains and losses displays on my current holdings, are calculated using FIFO.

Is there a reason why FIFO is used? Can it be changed to average cost for UK users? That would be more helpful for most users I believe (thinking section 104 rules).

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2

Fully agree with you. I’ve said this on other threads, FIFO is irritating and completely useless as far as I’m concerned. Thank God I can at least keep track using AVCO on my Excel spreadsheet!

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3

Glad I’m not the only one.

I contacted freetrade directly but only got an explanation of what FIFO is (I already knew) rather than why it is used.

Hopefully we can drum up some support in here

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Agree completely. FIFO waste of time and misleading.

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5

Completely agreed. I’ve also mentioned elsewhere and also made a specific point in one of the customer surveys that came my way recently. If people prefer FIFO then give us an option to change it in settings. From my understanding FIFO came from stock inventory where you would want to sell oldest item first but makes no sense where you might want to average down during market downturn.
Another option would be be sell specific purchased shares where the cost of those shares are already known.
I suspect this is not going to change anytime soon

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6

Yes, I would like to see this change as well.

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7

I completely agree too.

It completely skews results and prevents you from correctly tracking your progress in a stock.

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8

Agreed. Can this thread be turned into a suggestion?

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9

OP would have to move it or someone make a new thread.

I also agree with what’s said here

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10

I managed to move this and voted. I didn’t know I could do that.

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11

To add to this. With the lower capital gains limit it is going to become more important.

Hugely frustrating. And without being dramatic, quite amateur.

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12

I recently found out that FIFO is a thing earlier this week, and I have to say that this is such a ridiculous system. I shouldnt have to keep an excel sheet or another app to get an accurate view of my average cost price.

I recently sold 10% of my holdings in a company, with an average of 76p. Once sold, my average went down to 67p. I went from being in 12% in profit to 27%, which is wholly misleading. Agree with others here, and TInvest, quite amateur.

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13

Today is a perfect example…

I sell a few shares of a stock I’m 40% up in, and now I’m only 9% up according to the app… because of where I averaged up.

That means I could soon have a 30% gain, but Freetrade will tell me it’s a 1% loss.

Glad I have the ability to visually mark my true average in TradingView, or I’d be completely in the dark.

This needs changing ASAP. It’s completely ridiculous.

We should have a choice of FIFO, LIFO or AVG

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14

I’m going to bump this to gain awareness and raise more votes because it’s a small change that is absolutely essential in order for investors to know the true loss or gain of their investments.

I’m now showing a loss on a stock I’m actually 30% up in. This would unnecessarily cause many investors to close out their positions.

Please vote and keep this thread going if you believe this needs changing.

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15

I am just curious if it’s the US stocks that are using FIFO method or has it been applied to UK ones too?

I can understand why they are using FIFO as a calculation if thats how they are processing the shares, but I feel it’s only really useful to day & swing traders to see this calculation. As a buy & hold investor; Average cost is more useful.

Ideally the user should be able to see both.

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16

Voted

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17

UK too

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18

I didn’t realise this was a thing but did notice some of my investment gains seemed to change after selling a percentage of my holdings.

Voted. This should be sorted out.

19

I knew about this as soon as I started trading but found it annoying as Android could only see the last 5 share buys from any stock etc, and also the more years you invest the harder it becomes trying to see what prices you bough in at and even more annoying when you buy multible times a month from the same stock, I can imagine after 5 years etc this would be a head wrecker lol and breath

Long story short story I voted as well…

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