Re: short returns, max securities

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In Reply to: short returns, max securities posted by Mark Ellington on November 07, 2003 at 06:31:26:

: Two questions:

: 1. How are short positions accounted for in the "Portfolio/Investments Overlay" and "Portfolio Gain" graphs?

: I have a number of short option positions at any given time.

: I have noticed that the return and or P/L curves are different -- the "Portfolio/Investments Overlay" curve shows (visually) larger positive returns than the "Portfolio Gain" curve for the same portfolio. For example, the Overlay PF curve shows new highs more often than the Gain curve. Is this a side effect of the short positions or is it something else? Also, how do the shorts affect the % return figures on the "Portfolio Gain" graph?

: For example, are new shorts added to the the cash balance? Would this then reduce the %return for the PF since the returns are relative to a larger cash base? Some brokers handle short balances as a sort of sub-account which is not added to the portfolio cash balance, but which is included in PL calculations.

: 2. I noticed from an earlier post that FM has a 500 issue limit per PF. I will hit that limit pretty soon, and was wondering if there is a possibility of having the limit lifted, maybe in the Advisor version (I currently used the base version) so that the max issues would be limited by machine capacity.

: Most of the issues in my PF are closed and I have them marked "hidden", but they are still in the PF so that historical PLs are tracked.

:
: Nice program, I use it daily.

: Thanks - Mark Ellington

Hi Mark,

1) Short positions are included in these graph types. If your short
position has a gain, it is included in the Gain
graph, and as your short position increases/decreases in value, this is
reflected in the Portfolio/Investments Overlay
graph types.

Recently a bug was discovered in the Portfolio/Investments Overlay - Value
graph type where if you have transactions that
were recorded at prices other than the closing price this graph could
display incorrectly. It has been fixed, but isn't
in any released version yet. If you're interested to test out the fix
please send me an e-mail, and I'll send you a
temporary version with this fix in it.

New shorts are added to the cash balance if you have a default cash account
assigned.

2) This limit could be increased. Thanks for the feedback. I think we may
consider having it so that the Personal version
can still have 500 investments open at any one time, and we can ratchet up
this number for the Professional/Advisor versions.

Thanks for the compliment on Fund Manager, it is always nice to hear... :)

Thanks,
Mark

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