[Feature suggestion] sell based on purchase price

Please up-vote, up-vote, up-vote!!!
Please add the ability to sell a stock based on the purchase rate/individual position… (see “Specific-Shares Method” link in references below, this is not made up)
Also, add the % stat to each purchase shown on the stock screen. At the moment you only show a combined average but I want to be able to sell off the bad purchases (bad positions) when they go Bullish and keep those I bought at a better price (purchased in a bear market) that will be earning a higher %.

I haven’t sold much yet but the sell screen only asks how many I want to sell, not which ones I want to sell. Surely this is broken!!!


Example:
Ticker #AA89
share 1 - 4 shares - +5% gain/loss
share 2 - 4 shares - -1% gain/loss
share 3 - 4 shares - +4% gain/loss
My average gain/loss for this stock is +2.66%

Say I am re-assessing my portfolio OR I see another stock opportunity appear that I want to buy immediately. I don’t have any spare funds to top up my account, and it would take a couple of hours to process a top-up anyway (just a couple of examples but there can be many reasons). I want to sell my weakest position in this particular stock to free up some funds and improve my portfolio at the same time.

Ticker #AA89
share 1 - 4 shares - +5%
share 2 - 4 shares - -1% …SOLD at a 1% loss
share 3 - 4 shares - +4%
In this example my new average is now +4.5% imediatly incresing the stats in both this stock and my overall portfolio

I can now use the, let’s say £10 I sold share 2 for on the new stock opportunity I found and want to buy into. Alternatively, I could keep that £10 aside until #AA89 bears even lower and open a new position there.

Ultimately, I have ÂŁ10 back in my account to do with as I please and my portfolio, or at least the average on this particular stock has increased by 1.84% instantly.


I do not know the specific laws around this but I know this is available on other platforms and you can specify these requests if you were to buy directly through a broker, possibly this is only for US?
Let technology move us forward, be innovative and prosper. I’m sure if Freetrade was the first to realize this in the UK their customer base would BOOM.


References:
"Specific-Share Method: Specific-Shares Method Definition

This is available on other platforms like Fidelity (skip to @5:06):

reddit question: How does this work? Selling stocks at different prices…

It won’t make any difference, all that matters is the average price you bought shares at, and the average price you sold at.

I don’t see how not when I am able to do this on other platforms and the ultimate aim is to buy low and sell high. I want to sell off a bad purchase without making a loss or at least at minimal loss, and reinvest that into an alternative, more worth while stock while still keeping the more worth while purchases. At the same time fixing the profit on my overall portfolio.
To be honest I just assumed I could do this naturally but then only just discovered the limit in selling by accident. You can also fix the average percentage by buying more when the market bears more but you need to purchase lots more to do this, but you can also fix the profit even more by dumping the stocks purchased at a bad price at the correct time.

Say I had 3 purchases
One is making a +10%
One is making a +2%
One is making a -2%

I want to sell the stock that is making +2% because I won’t lose much. I don’t know if there are any fees calculated at sale. But I would have some money back to reinvest, hopefully at a profit still. I could keep that to reinvest when the market bears more, or instantly purchase a more worthwhile stock of my choosing. Later the -0.2% stock increases to +1% and I sell that again. I still have a bulk of stock making roughly +12% which affects both the stock average and overall portfolio.

Are you talking about 3 purchases of the same stock? That sounds incredibly complicated.

So you’ve got 3 purchases, all roughly equal weighting…

Purchase 1 is down 99%
Purchase 2 is down 99%
Purchase 3 is up 5%

You want to be able to sell purchase 3 for a ‘profit’, even though the purchases as a whole are down by a huge amount?

I see what you’re saying, but makes no sense when you look at your portfolio and they’re all rolled into one.

Are you wanting to do this for capital gains purposes in a GIA account? Because there are a couple of rules but otherwise what you’re asking for just doesn’t matter.

if you buy 3 oranges for £1, and 2 for £3, and 1 for £4, you have 6 oranges. there’s nothing different about any of them, they’re the same asset at an average of £0.75 each. Order of purchase makes basically no difference, nor does the price you bought them at, they’re indistinguishable.

There’s only two circumstances where it would make a difference. day trading, and bed and breakfasting.

See the section 104 holding rule

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Also, if you’re outside an ISA, there is some CGT requirement to use average price, i.e. you can’t “pick” which ones you sell. Anyone know the details?

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It sounds like you’ll looking at this all wrong?

Sorry if this sounds like a silly question but are you saying you mistakenly bought a coca cola share for lower than the two other transactions you intended to and now want to sell shares that equate to the volume of your first transactions?

I would also like to see the P/L for individual buys as well as the overall but I get your points. Yeh when it comes to selling them, doesn’t make a difference. The first in first out thing isn’t my favourite either.

I don’t think it make any difference in the UK? There’s the same day rule and the 30 day rule. Everything else is counted at one bundle it makes zero difference what’s sold. And of course zero difference regardless in an ISA

for reference:
How to Sell a Stock in Fidelity - YouTube @5:06

but it doesn’t need to be this complicated. All you need is a drop-down to specify which certificate you want to sell. or a sell option next to your purchase certificate.

in most cases the government default FIFO might fix this but, this depends on your strategy being able to choose the specific shares you want to sell at sale will put the customer in control.

ideally profit yes or to minimize loss

That’s the US they have different rules. It would help to know why you’re wanting to do something like this because as said, it doesn’t matter.

In the example you showed, you cant actually do that. you can only sell shares based on order, not “specific” certificates. even if this was an option in the UK, you couldn’t do this since you don’t own a single share in coca-cola to sell.

You will want to read the government guide posted above that should help clarify things. But what you’re asking basically doesn’t matter in the UK.

Can I only sell once I own one whole share then? and this is just a couple quick screenshots, they are only examples of ones i have purchased multiple times.

I mean in your example of trying to sell specific certificates, since you dont own a single certificate you cant ‘sell’ it. you own a fraction of a share. (to clarify, you can buy and sell any amount, and any fraction of US shares since when you bought them doesn’t matter after 30 days)

But as i said, it would be good to understand why you want to do this, and its worth reading the government documentation because it ultimately doesn’t matter. one orange is the same as another orange in this case in the UK expect for the very specific noted exceptions.

Freetrade does a first in first out average calculation so this isn’t something they’ll likely look to build.

Secondly, FT is built for investing where most want to know the average price per holding not a split % gain/loss per transaction as you may have 10s/100s of transactions on a particular stock

The stocks shown are for example purposes only. the aim is to minimize loss I guess and to reinvest that bad purchase into something better.

Thanks @Eden for the .gov link but this doesn’t even mention the FIFO rule I thought applied. The UK rules sound mega complicated. But it doesn’t actually mention that you cant sell using the specific shares method. all of the prerequisites are in place as you hold certificates for each sale on the account.

Each purchase may have a different strategy, I might make a one off purchase for a short term investment where most of my purchases are strategized for long term. In this example i would want to sell the short term investment first for a quicker gain but keep my most profiting investments.

I understand that all the purchases are the same thing but you could also think of it as if they are all in different bank accounts earning a different rate of interest. I would close the account earning 0.2% interest and move it to a bank that is paying 2%.

If this is against the rules in the UK then fair enough. Thanks for educating me.

i guess in my example here, i would have to make sure i sold within 30 days to make use of the short term investment?

Curiously, what happens to my certificates when I sell only a few shares anyway?

In this case in the UK they’re literally not.

anything over 30 days is considered one single pot of collective shares, it makes absolutely no difference what you sell, when, or for how much.

There are only three things to consider, same day, 30 days, everything else.

How to identify the shares disposed of

When you dispose of shares you can’t work out your capital gain or loss until you’ve matched the shares disposed of with shares you acquired. You’re treated as disposing of shares in the following order:

First Shares acquired on the same day as the disposal (the ‘same day’ rule).
Second Shares acquired in the 30 days following the day of disposal (the ‘bed and breakfasting’ rule) provided the person making the disposal was resident in the United Kingdom at the time of the acquisition.
Third Shares in the Section 104 holding.

If the above rules fail to exhaust the shares disposed of, the remaining shares are matched with later acquisitions, taking the earliest one first.

I still don’t understand what you’re trying to achieve? On the rare occasion that you’re selling and rebuying shares within 30 days you need to keep track of that for capital gains purposes.

If you’re not understanding the CGT rules have you considered an ISA account? Because then none of these rules apply and you dont need to worry about it, they’re all in one big pot and it makes literally zero difference when you bought or sold for any specific share.

They become someone elses. All shares are digital unless you’re specifically trading in paper shares (Freetrade don’t offer this service and its slow and expensive).

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:smiley: