It is hard to figure out your data, as posted... there are 5 column headings
and what look like 7 pieces of information per row of data. On top of that,
your example (buy and sell) is impossible to determine as those numbers as
lined up under each other in the posted example data. Can you reformulate
your example using, say, a dash to delineate columns of information (missing
information would be signaled with two dashes with nothing in-between them)?
Also, so whatever solution we come up with is relevant, how is your data
segregated? By that I mean, is your description (items you bought/sold) on
separate worksheets (one sheet per descriptive item as you posted data might
indicate) or are they all intermingled within the same worksheet (and you
just didn't show us other descriptive examples)?

--
Rick (MVP - Excel)


"Jeff-B" wrote in message
...
I trade futures and by year end I have many buys/sells and short/covers to
match up. Depending on the day I may have several buys before selling 1
contract. here is an example of the data I have in excel:

Date Buy Sell Desc
Price

8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 132.95
8/13/2007 2 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.00
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.04
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.06
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.07
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.18
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.28
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.30
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.34
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.39
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.40
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.44
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.49
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.49
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.50
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.65
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.65
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.67
8/13/2007 1 SEP07 CBOT 5 DOW 133.70

The idea is to do a first in first out match up. To explain the first
trade
I bought 1 contract then sold 2 contracts thus being short 1 contract ect.
Can someone please help me figure out how I might be able automate this
matching. It takes me so much time doing this line by line manually . The
ultimate would be for it to calculate the profit or loss for each trade.
If
this question is beyond the scoop of this forum I apologize. I am at a
loss
after several attempts to figure this out on my own.