BestQuestion wrote:I found an article on the web that addresses this question. The author says we should use the average of the High and Low price as of the day that the deceased person passed away. Is it reasonable?
Yes and that's the same method used for gift purposes, when donating stock to a charity. Average of the high and low. Or, the average of the high/low averages of the prior and subsequent trading days, if the DOD isn't a trading day. You would weight those two averages based on the number of days between the DOD and the trading days, if they were different. Reg 20.2031-2.
The same rule applies to bonds. Most bonds aren't traded every day, and trade data isn't as accessible as it is for stocks, which can make the broker valuations helpful.