I had a total 821 shares of a stock that I sold 676 shares today. I bought them all at different times and prices. I use Scottrade to do my trades and I always keep track of my profits by using their Portfolio (Open Positions) screen which lists all the stock I own, the date I purchased them, the price, etc. etc. (I edit and update my positions myself). My question is: Since I did not sell all of my shares and now have 145 left, what buying price do I assign to them so I can keep track of my profits? Scottrade lumps them all together and doesn't look at it this way but I need to know what price to assign to them so I can see if I am making a profit or not. What about for tax purposes? Is this making sense to anyone? I'm kind of new to this so if this is a stupid question, I'm sorry but I really need some help here!
For taxes it's first in - first out. In other words, you have to take the price you first paid against the selling price for your capitol gains/loss. Also, each buy/sell is treated as a different line item on your Schedule A (I'm pretty sure). So, in your case, if you bought those shares you sold as 3-different purchases you would have 3-line items on your Schedule A. Example XXX 100 @ $15.00 XXX 200 @ $18.50 XXX 250 @ $17.50. You then sell 450 shares for $20. You're line items would be XXX 100 bought $15.00 sold $20.00 (gain = $500) XXX 200 bought $18.50 sold $20.00 (gain = $300) XXX 150 bought $17.50 sold $20.00 (gain = $375) you're remaining 100 shares would have a purchase price of $17.50 for your taxes whenever you decide to sell them. As far as keeping track of prifits/loss, you can either do it like above, or just average the purchase price of $17.40 (add total cost / 550 shares). Either way, it should work out the close to the same for TOTAL prifit/loss of the purchases and sells. It really depends on if you want to average your purchase price and look at it that way, or look at each individual purchase and look at your profit/loss that way. By the way, what stock was it?
Thanks for the help Sean...that was exactly the answer I was looking for. The stock I am talking about is Sirius Digital Radio (SIRI). I've owned this stock and have been purchasing more every couple months for the last year and a half. I decided to dump most of them today. I've made a decent amount of money with it and decided it was time to get out. I only own $500 worth now and I could care less if I lose that. Maybe it will shoot to $25 like XM Satellite Radio (XMSR) and give me a decent return. If not, I'm not worried!
