Your own grouping
Merge, move and unmerge trades when the automatic pairing isn't how you see a position, and what that changes.
The app pairs your trades automatically, first in, first out (see Trades and positions). That's the right answer for taxes, but not always how you think about your trading. Maybe you see three small buys and one sale as "one trade", or you want a stock and the options you traded on it in one row.
You can reshape groups yourself. The app remembers what you decided and keeps it through every recalculation and re-import.
The actions
All of these are on the Trade Log. Tick rows to select them; the buttons appear in the bar at the bottom of the screen.
| Button | Select | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Merge Groups | Two or more group rows | Combines them into one group |
| Merge Trades | Trade rows inside expanded groups, or rows in the List view | Makes a new group from those trades |
| Move to Group | One or more trades (or dividends) | Moves them into any other group, whatever its ticker |
| Unmerge | One or more group rows | Takes the groups apart; their trades go to the List view |
| Unmerge Trades | Trade rows inside expanded groups | Takes just those trades out of their groups |
A group you shaped gets the USER_MANAGED tag, so you can filter for your own groups.
Warning: Delete Groups is not the same as Unmerge. It permanently deletes the trades and dividends in the selected groups, whole trades, including any part of them that sits in another group. To take a group apart, use Unmerge.
Merging
You buy 100 shares and sell them in two parts: 60 on Monday, 40 on Friday. Automatic grouping makes two closed groups, one per sale. Select both group rows and click Merge Groups to see it as the one trade it was in your head.
When you merge, the app doesn't invent new numbers. It runs the same first-in, first-out pairing inside your group and adds the results up:
- Closed group:
RETURN $is the total of everything sold in it. - Open group:
QUANTITY,ENTRYandRETURN $describe the shares still open, at today's price. What you already sold inside the group shows inRETURN $once the group closes. - Stock plus options in one group: each contract is paired on its own, then everything is added up. The row shows the stock's details (or the earliest contract's, if there is no stock).
- Several accounts: a group may hold trades from more than one account.
ACCOUNTthen shows the first account and+1,+2for the others.
What you get when you pick a trade
Merge Trades and Move to Group work with whole trades. If you pick a buy that the automatic pairing had split (40 shares in a closed group, 60 in the open one), you take all 100 shares of that buy, not just the piece in the row you clicked. A trade that is already partly in one of your groups only contributes the part that isn't.
Later trades follow your group
Your group keeps its shares. When a later sale would, by first in, first out, use shares that belong to your group, that sale joins your group automatically.
You merged a buy of 100 shares into your own group. A month later you import a sale of 30 shares. First in, first out says those 30 come from your 100, so the sale lands in your group, and your group now shows 70 shares open.
Unmerging
Unmerge and Unmerge Trades take trades out of groups and leave them ungrouped:
- They appear in the List view with the
UNMERGEDtag. A trade that is only partly unmerged shows "40 unmerged" under its size. - They are not put back into automatic grouping. They wait for you to group them again (select them in the List view and click Merge Trades, or use Move to Group).
- They count in no results while ungrouped: not in performance, not in strategies, and the tax report lists them as not counted. Ungrouped shares receive no dividends.
- They are not treated as a data problem: Show Issues doesn't list them.
Unmerge works on any group: automatic, detected strategies and your own.
Tip: grouping actions apply right away to the groups you touched, but they don't rebuild the automatic groups around them. Click Recalculate on the Trade Log afterwards to refresh them.
Moving trades and dividends
Move to Group opens a list of your groups, any ticker and any account (the group the trades are all in is left out). Search by ticker, status, side or account, pick one and the selected trades move there. If one of several trades can't move, the others still do and a message says which failed.
- Into an automatic group: that group becomes yours (
USER_MANAGED). Its trades stay in it. - Out of a group: the source group loses the trade. A group left with nothing is removed.
- Dividends: moving a dividend sets where that dividend goes from now on. Normally the app splits each dividend over the groups that held shares on the ex-dividend date. Once you move any part of a dividend, the whole dividend is placed the way you left it, and the app stops splitting it. If a group holding part of it goes away later, the app takes over that dividend again.
Dividends can't be unmerged; move them to another group instead.
What survives
| You do this | Your grouping |
|---|---|
| Recalculate, or import a new file | Kept. New trades are paired around it |
| Upload the same broker file again | Kept. The trades are recognized as the same ones |
| Edit a trade's quantity down | Kept, trimmed so no group holds more than the trade has |
| Delete the trades (or the account) | Gone for those trades. Re-imported trades start out in automatic grouping |
Rules and limits
- Merge Groups needs at least two groups.
- The $0 stand-in trades the system adds for missing history can't be grouped, moved or unmerged. They are rebuilt where still needed.
- A trade can't be a buy in one group and a sell in another; such a merge is refused.
- Strategies stop where you take over. The app only looks for wheels, covered calls and other strategies in automatic groups. If you merge or move a detected strategy's trades, the result is your group, and the app won't detect a strategy on those shares again.
- Missing purchases stay visible. If your group holds a sale but not all the shares it
needs, the whole group's cost basis is unknown: it has no result (a dash,
CLOSED (UNKNOWN)), even for the part whose buy is in the group, the same as automatic groups. Only its dividends still count. The system doesn't add a $0 stand-in inside your groups.
Related
- Merge, move and unmerge trades: the same actions, step by step.
- Trades and positions: how the automatic pairing works.
- Tags and labels:
USER_MANAGED,UNMERGEDand the other tags.