A Lesson in Record-Keeping

[progree]

2. You still need the records to come up with average cost -- mutual fund companies didn't

Last edited Fri Oct 23, 2020, 02:37 PM - Edit history (1)

keep track of cost basis until 2012 or thereabouts when required by law. (Speaking of personal experience with Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab mutual funds). So for shares bought in or after 2012 (depends on asset class, different dates for stocks, for bonds, for mutual funds, different for ETFs blah blah), they (the brokerage or wherever one's account is) will be tracking that. For shares purchased prior to 2012 or whatever the year was, nobody is tracking what their cost basis is.

Fortunately I've been keeping track, got it all in a spreadsheet including the pre-2012 shares.

And yes, when I do partial (or total) sales of mutual funds, it's using average cost basis (the default).