PortTrak 2.0 - Dealing with Data, Covering a Short

The Big Picture

When you instruct PortTrak to cover a short, it will prompt you for all of the relevant information needed to cover the short in your portfolio. It needs to know what the ticker symbol you are covering is, how many shares you are covering, what the cost per share is, and how much you will be paying in commission.

PortTrak will give you a list of securities that you are short. You should choose one of these, and then continue to enter the rest of the data. You cannot cover a stock that you are not short.

When you enter all of the information for PortTrak, make sure to only enter positive numbers with decimals. You should not enter fractions or symbols (like dollar signs), or negative numbers.

Once you are finished, PortTrak will take your information and close out as many short transactions from the Separated portfolio sheet as it takes to cover the required number of shares. These will be closed out on a FIFO (First In, First Out) basis. For every transaction that it closes, PortTrak will enter a log of a closed transaction on the "Transaction Log" sheet. These can be used later for tax purposes to compute capital gains and losses. On the Consolidated portfolio sheet, there is an aggregate of all of the transactions in a given stock, with the average price, average cost, etc., unless you cover all of a short, in which case it will be gone from both the Consolidated and the Separated sheets.

PortTrak adds nor subtracts funds from your portfolio when you cover your short, moving these funds to (or from) your cash.

Step By Step

1) Choose "Cover Short" from the menu
2) Choose the ticker symbol
3) Enter the number of shares you are covering
4) Enter the price per share
5) Enter the commission you are being charged
6) Hit the "Calculate" button to see what the total costs of covering are going to be
7) Hit the "OK" button to enter the transaction
8) PortTrak will close out as many transactions from the Separated portfolio sheet as it needs to cover the required number of shares
9) PortTrak will create an item on the Transaction Log page for every transaction closed out
10) PortTrak will add (or subtract) the gain (loss) for this short to the cash in your portfolio
11) If you have completely covered a short, PortTrak will remove it from your portfolio

Back to Dealing With Data

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