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Market Prices Differ in Precision
Our club's broker account is with TDAmeritrade. We use a Bivio NAV on the last day of the month for our official valuation because it usually matches our month-end brokerage statement.

I have found that in the case of one of our holdings, LKQ, TDAmeritrade often reports a three-decimal price per share value and Bivio uses only two decimals. As a result our monthly audit requires that I explain the slight difference nearly every time for those with short memories. This seems to be the only company where Bivio seldom matches our broker exactly.

Why does LKQ's price per share show a different precision than other companies? Do other companies which we don't happen to own do the same thing?
I routinely use the broker's (Scottrade's) cost basis rather than Bivio's. The difference is rounding error.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 12:47 PM, Michael B Jones via bivio.com <user*21595500001@bivio.com> wrote:
Our club's broker account is with TDAmeritrade. We use a Bivio NAV on the last day of the month for our official valuation because it usually matches our month-end brokerage statement.

I have found that in the case of one of our holdings, LKQ, TDAmeritrade often reports a three-decimal price per share value and Bivio uses only two decimals. As a result our monthly audit requires that I explain the slight difference nearly every time for those with short memories. This seems to be the only company where Bivio seldom matches our broker exactly.

Why does LKQ's price per share show a different precision than other companies? Do other companies which we don't happen to own do the same thing?

Yes, it is rounding error.  But why do all the rest of our holdings report cost to only two decimals so there is no rounding error?
 
Mike Jones
Wall$treet Wannabees


From: Jeanne Tieken <jeannetieken@gmail.com>
To: The Club Cafe <club_cafe@bivio.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 12:49 PM
Subject: Re: [club_cafe] Market Prices Differ in Precision

I routinely use the broker's (Scottrade's) cost basis rather than Bivio's.  The difference is rounding error.



On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 12:47 PM, Michael B Jones via bivio.com <user*21595500001@bivio.com> wrote:
Our club's broker account is with TDAmeritrade.  We use a Bivio NAV on the last day of the month for our official valuation because it usually matches our month-end brokerage statement.

I have found that in the case of one of our holdings, LKQ, TDAmeritrade often reports a three-decimal price per share value and Bivio uses only two decimals.  As a result our monthly audit requires that I explain the slight difference nearly every time for those with short memories.  This seems to be the only company where Bivio seldom matches our broker exactly.

Why does LKQ's price per share show a different precision than other companies?  Do other companies which we don't happen to own do the same thing?



Hi Mike,

I don't know what it is about LKQ, but I had another club do a lot of research on the same question recently. They found that their broker was using the "Last Intraday trading" price for the final LKQ price. This is different from the closing regular day price that our pricing data feed uses. Why this gets used for LKQ and not for other companies is beyond me. It may just be that LKQ is more thinly traded and that there is more variation for it than for other companies in after hours trading.

As I'm sure you are all aware, stock prices change pretty constantly and are shown to various decimal places on various different reports from various sources.

For the purposes of your club accounting, what is important is that the prices are set from a consistent source. This is part of what you receive with your bivio subscription.

We use a very high quality data feed, the same one used by Yahoo finance, to update your closing prices each day. We do not take pricing from your brokers for the closing prices that are used for club valuations. We do use broker pricing when you trade a stock if you are using AccountSync. Therefore there should be no cost basis difference between the broker and bivio unless you have some other mistake in your records.

A closing price you see on a brokers report is no more "correct" than the one in bivio. If the number of shares of each stock agrees between bivio and your broker, a few cents of difference in total lot price is not something that needs to be "corrected" nor will it make your records any more correct than they already are in bivio.

Laurie Frederiksen
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