The Bricknode Broker API is expanded to support shorting of financial instruments and negative acquisition values. A short position in a financial instrument is reflected by the Amount of the position being negative.

When holding a long position the Amount of the position is positive and if acquisition values are tracked the acquisition values are also a positive amount. It has previously been possible via the API to establish a negative position in a financial instrument but the acquisition value could never be used for this and was always set to 0 if a negative position was established and once the position was positive again the acquisition value was being calculated again.

With this new capability where short positions can be tracked with acquisition values there is also a limitation that is introduced when creating new transactions. The limitation pertains to a position not being possible to reverse from long to short or the other way around in one transaction if acquisition values are to be tracked.

For example, if an account is long 100 shares of a stock and you want to establish a short position of 100 shares you have to input two transactions of -100 shares via CreateBusinessTransaction where the first transaction should have no acquisition value since it is an exit and the second transaction should contain a negative acquisition value that reflects how much cash was received, inclusive of fees, when entering into the short position.

If you don’t have a need for tracking acquisition values and simply want to work with position amounts you can still reverse positions with one transaction as long as the position has 0 as acquisition value and you put in 0 as the acquisition value of the new transaction.