How to record investment on futures?

[rungsun]

I am in Thailand and have 2 questions as below
1) I am starting to trade in SET50 Index Futures where the price will be 1 point for 1,000 THB. How can I record my trade for short and long position?
2) Does FM will be able to retrieve quote from TFEX (Thailand Futre Exchange)?

Regards,
Rungsun

[Mark]

Hi Rungsun,

Fund Manager doesn't have any special features related to tracking futures, such as leverage. Fund Manager's investments always have a value that is equal to the number of shares owned times the price. You can set these however you want, but that relationship always remains true.

We don't retrieve directly from TFEX, but maybe some of our other quote servers off the quotes you need, like the Thailand Stock Exchange? See the list here, with links to each server:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/intrtv.html

[rungsun]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for prompt reply. In this case, I will need to track this out of FM.
I did try to retrieve quote from Thailand Stock of Exchange but find the it cannot retrieve Thai indexs or Futures.

Regards,
Rungsun

[chakl]

Thank you

[Mark]

Hi Kevin,

Thanks for the nice comments, glad you're please with FM so far.

Everything you said makes sense. Fund Manager doesn't do anything special for futures. All Fund Manager investments adhere to the same model, where the valuation is simply the # of shares owned times the price. To get the value correct for futures you'd need to either multiply the share quantity or the price. If you can easily do this in Excel, then that sounds like a fine solution. Import using 'File / Import / Transactions / Generic...'.

[chakl]

That's great Mark - thanks for the reply.

[Mark]

Hi Kevin,

Fund Manager automatically scales the shares (100X) when it comes across an option in the OFX file. As you've observed, it doesn't do any scaling for futures.

[dam4kzs]

I'm hoping that FM handles Futures appropriately since the last post on this thread. There is a selection for Futures in the drop-down menu you get at Investment Properties>General>Type:.

And at the "Internet Retrieve" tab there is "Multiply Retrieved Price By:" with a dialog to enter the multiplier. Would/could this multiply the transaction price, manually entered prices, &/or prices retrieved from servers that have Future contract pricing like Bloomberg?

Or could it be "fooled" by creating a special/custom Internet Retrieve online server that a customer could set up just for this purpose?

I transact a fair amount of Futures. I bought FM, but I really need a solution that can handle futures.

Any help would be appreciated.

Drew

[Mark]

Hi Drew,

You can track futures. The will be valued like any other investment, where the market value is the # of shares you own times the closing price for any date. You can make use of the option to multiply the retrieved price. This only affects the price retrieved, it doesn't affect your transactions. Record your transactions at the price/value for your case. If you have an example you'd like help with please let me know the specifics.

[dam4kzs]

Thanks Mark, I'll get one together hopefully tomorrow.