I've tried various queries and read different answers to this and nothing seems to give EXACTLY what I'm looking for. Advice is appreciated. 

I have a table with items, dates and quantities. For each item, I need the latest date and associated quantity. The table looks like this:

```
item   date         qty
1234   2014-12-22   300
1234   2015-02-13   500

```

After running this query:

```
SELECT item, MAX(date), qty
FROM table
GROUP BY item

```

I get this:

```
item   date         qty
1234   2015-02-13   300

```

Instead of a `qty` of `500`. I've tried a couple of different solutions including [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16995786/mysql-max-function-mixing-rows) and [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/537223/mysql-control-which-row-is-returned-by-a-group-by?lq=1). The first one gave all the records with `NULL` in `date`. The second one seems to work, until I try to do `SUM(qty)` (there can be multiple `qty` for an `item` on any given `date`). Since this solution sorts by `date` descending, and does not actually cut out any data, it doesn't help in this scenario.

Why does my original query not work? Any other ideas?

Thanks!