I guess whichever way thd taxman calculates profit will be the best way to show it so long as you have the historic profit/loss calculation for part sales for easy identification later on. I know better statements will be one thing in the future for freetrade to look for
What is concerning is that if people are relying on the profit/loss figure in FreeTrade then using my calculations this figure is WRONG.
Many first time users of FreeTrade might be buying and selling a number of shares and then using this figure to say oh great Iāve made 10% profit now on this stock Iām going to sell the entire holding when in fact the figure is not 10%.
Would be very useful if someone from FreeTrade can reply to this thread and advise.
Yet my manual calculations show just £9.93 profit
I can now see where FreeTrade is getting the +5.04% (around Ā£15.87 profit). They are using my average price per share Ā£3.1158. So the current cost to buy the shares using the avg. price per share is Ā£314.70 and if I sold at the current share price Iād get back Ā£330.88 giving a profit of Ā£16.18.
But in reality, my overall profit should I sell this holding would be Ā£9.93 based on my manual calculation. Like I have mentioned before this Investment gain/loss is misleading and not correct, or am I wrong - please can someone from FreeTrade clarify this ASAP as Iām pretty sure Iām not the only person using the Investment gain/loss figure.
That makes sense, the average price per share is also based on the remaining shares, after selling the older most expensive shares. So the current average is lower than the overall average of all buys
I think any way of calculating the remaining profit is open to interpretation. For example of you only had 1 share left it wouldnāt make sense (to me) to show the total profit on all shares previously bought/sold
The issue is the gain/loss is misleading. I āwasā using this figure as a indication of my current position, selling for a Ā£15.87 gain where the true overall gain for this holding is just Ā£9.93.
I can also replicate FTās 18.79% in-app āInvestment Gain/Lossā figure if I take the single sale of 65 to mean that the first 65 I bought were sold by removing the first buys of 33 and 14 and recalculating only a 14 share buy for 04 Feb (thus removing a further 18 buy equalling 65 removed) at the correctly adjusted average cost per share, 588.17/32) x 14 = 257.32.
The 65 sell side is then ignored for the return calculation.
So depending on how you look at things, you get a very different impression.
For me, this figure is wrong and needs to be addressed. A newbie investor might see an 18% gain like your example and āassumeā that this is their overall position for this stock when sold when actually it is only 4.27%.
Whatās worst some entire holdings might have been sold out at a loss not realising.
I agree itās a bit messy but not sure thereās a clear way gain/loss can be shown by just one number when thereās been multiple buys/sells
I think the only way to show it clearly would be a breakdown of all transactions to show the total gain/loss for that stock. That would include any gain/loss thatās been ālocked inā by previous sells