http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=576502Summary:
* Nuveen Hires Robert C. Doll Jr. as chief equity strategist and senior portfolio manager
* Dreman Trimming Open-End Lineup
* DoubleLine is launching DoubleLine Floating Rate Fund
* Buffalo plans to merge Buffalo China (BUFCX) into Buffalo International (BUFIX) in January.
* Fidelity will merge several funds to Fidelity Stock Selector All Cap Fund
* Clipper, Davis New York Venture, and Selected American Shares waive their 30-day trading restriction through Dec. 31
* Etc.
Comments
" Selected American Shares (SLASX) will waive their normal 30-day trading restriction through Dec. 31. According to parent company Davis Selected Advisers, outside shareholders requested that they be allowed to realize gains before a potential capital gains tax hike in 2013."
Does anyone have statistics on mutual fund redemptions based on this dynamic? I would assume this would happen just after the fund distributes these gains...varies by mutual fund...but happening soon.
The idea is to recognize cap gains this year, rather than defer them into future years. That is, if one purchased a share at $10 and it is now worth $12, one can sell/rebuy - recognize the gain now (pay 15% of $2), and reset the cost basis to $12. Thus, the future gain (taxed at as much as 23.8%) is reduced by $2.
You'll notice that I said nothing about distributions. If you're applying this tactic (and I have done so in anticipation of large distributions), you sell on the record date (so that you don't get the dividend), and buy back the next date. I'll use some numbers below to illustrate why, but the idea is that by selling before distribution, you pay 15% on your gain; if you sell after distribution, your gains are reduced by the amount of the distribution, but that distribution might be taxed at more than 15%.
Here's the example - same hypothesis - $10 share, now worth $12, and we'll throw in a $2 distribution.
Sell (and rebuy) after the distribution, and your cap gain is $0 (after a $2 distribution, the $12 share drops to $10 - your original cost). But you pay taxes on that distribution - at best 15% of $2, but possibly more.
Sell before the distribution and rebuy afterward: your cap gain is $2, your tax is 15% of $2, and you don't pay any tax on the distributions. So you're paying no more, and possibly less, than if you'd sold after the distribution.
As I said, I've used this tactic - for example, when I have shares that have not appreciated, I can skirt the distribution by selling before the distribution and buying back after. But that only works with funds that let you buy back shares immediately. Selected Shares has a policy of protecting shareholders, by not allowing this. Not only because of the usual reason (high turnover costing long term investors), but because this tactic harms investors who don't use it.
What happens is that with lots of people selling (albeit for 1 day), the distributions are divided among fewer shares. So those people just holding tight get a disproportionately high distribution. It's as though they bought a dividend just by standing pat. Not fair to them.
Thanks msf, almost all of my investement are in tax free or tax deferred accounts. I assume your strategies are meant for taxable accounts. I was a little more concerned with the selling dynamic on the overall market. Could the tax cloud move the equity market lower as a result of mass "temporary tax strategy" sell off by taxable investors?