[IceTDrinker]

PSA: do not use floating point for monetary amounts

[SAI_Peregrinus]

MS Excel uses floating point, and it's used a ton in finance. Don't use floating-point for monetary amounts if you don't know what rounding mode you've set.

[koverstreet]

It's somewhat acceptable with double precision floats - never single precision floats.

But far better to just use integer cents.

[IX-103]

Integer cents implies a specific rounding mode (truncation). That's probably not what you should be using. Floating point cents gets the best of both worlds (if you set the right rounding mode).

[nurettin]

I have used single precision floats in my latest project just to disprove this baloney.

[smh]

You are using 32 bit floats to represent money?

Does your project correctly calculate $300,000.00 + $0.01, (or even just correctly represent the value $300,000.01) and if so, how?

[nurettin]

Obviously you can't accumulate cent by cent. You can't even safely accumulate by quarter. Epsilon is too large to do that. I calculate cumulative pnl using std::fma, then multiply AUM with that and round to cents. It's good enough for backtesting, and it shaves a bunch of seconds off the clock.

[smh]

I see - I guess it's a financial modelling program or similar where the quantities don't represent precise values of money. I was imagining some kind of accounting-like app that would need to be reconciled with real-world balances.

[nurettin]

Yes, we work with futures and the largest transaction is around 1000 qty. It is so rare that most banks have a fat finger alert for such quantities.