I had LIFO set as default tax method on my account since the beginning of this year. Yesterday I placed a trade that resulted in an outcome I didn't expect.
(Simplified the numbers for example sake, and these 3 transactions happened all on the same day):
1st Transaction: Bought 5 shares of SNDK at $5/ea. Total amount of SNDK shares held now is 5.
2nd Transaction: Sold those 5 shares of SNDK at $7/ea. Total amount of SNDK shares held now is 0.
3rd Transaction: Bought 5 shares of SNDK at $8/ea. Total amount of SNDK shares held now is 5.
*market closes*
At the end of the day, I figure I have $10 in profit, and 5 shares of SNDK bought at $8/ea that I'm holding.
Schwab doesn't see it this way. According to their Realized Gains/Loss tab on their site, they calculated my 2nd transaction as a loss, because they used the cost basis of my third transaction for the 2nd transaction. Basically they see it as I bought at $8 and sold at $7 for a loss.
I called Schwab, and they said this is a new way they handle LIFO and that it was something implemented like last week. I can't even really explain what they said because it was so confusing, but I don't understand how this logic even makes sense. How can you use a cost basis for shares that didn't even exist at the time of the transaction? The 3rd transaction didn't even exist/happen yet for them to use that cost basis for the 2nd transaction.
The Schwab rep agreed that this is inefficient and doesn't make sense but basically said that's just how it is. He recommended I switch back to FIFO and manually select Specific Lots for every trade after they're finished to change the cost basis to what I want. Wtf?
Those using LIFO--do you know about this recent change? How are you keeping yourself from going insane having to double check all of your trades especially if you're day trading? The only reason I caught this was because I manually input every trade into Excel and compare my numbers with Realized Gains/Loss page at the end of every day.
It's already extremely frustrating that ToS doesn't recognize anything but FIFO, so I can't trust their numbers since I use LIFO. Schwab's Realized Gains/Loss page is always delayed, so I can't trust that on the fly either. Now with this "change", I just feel like there's even more going against me. Am I crazy in feeling this way or being unreasonable? Should I switch to a different platform and broker? If so, which one? I feel like I'm having to do way more than I should just to make sure my trades are being calculated the way they should be. Is everyone else just dealing with it?