Restarting from scratch

It sounds like you’ve already put considerable thought into restructuring your portfolio to better align with your goals of ESG focus, growth, and returns, while also simplifying your investments. Here are some steps and considerations for selling down and rebuilding your portfolio:

1. Compare holdings and management fees: It is likely that the main ETFs you’ve mentioned buying and selling down still have a large amount of overlap due to tech being a key feature of various ESG ETFs. Before selling down any asset, you may compare using our tool (on each asset page) and find that despite the label, there are quite similar holdings. This may mean that selling and buying doesn’t have the impact you are hoping for.
2. Review Holding Periods for CGT Implications: As you mentioned, selling assets held for over a year can benefit from the CGT discount (50% for individuals), which is a significant tax advantage. Prioritizing the sale of assets held for longer than a year can help reduce your tax liability.
3. Use Tools for Simplification: Utilise tools that can help track your investments and tax implications efficiently. Many platforms offer portfolio management tools that automate some of these processes. At Pearler, investors can choose to sync with Sharesight or Navexa. Getting your portfolio and purchase costs, that may be spread over multiple investing apps and years, consolidated into one of these tools before making any changes may save a lot of time tracking gains/losses.
4. Consolidate Overlapping Investments: Once you’ve compared ETFs, it may still be worthwhile selling some of these overlapping assets to can help you reduce redundancy and enhance diversification. It may be worth doing this in phases, focusing first on stocks or ETFs that are furtherest from your preferences and then see if further changes are made. A core principle of the Pearler community is to buy and hold, so we want investors to avoid unne

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I don’t think the share registries (computershare/MUFG/Boardroom) track what price you bought the shares at. They count the number of shares you own multiplied by current price to display the value.
The broker (pearler/openmarkets) send you a contract note with the price you paid per share and the brokerage on that parcel on the day you bought it. This is definitive as distinct from going back later and using the closing price for the day of the purchase. (It would be nice if Pearler was a little clearer on the brokerage cost incurred when buying as I see 0$, $5.50, $6.50 in these notes).
Brokers (e.g. commsec) don’t get purchase prices right in some circumstances, e.g. when buying on a float/offer where you pay directly to the issuer and the broker records the purchase price as 0.
When selling shares, the parcels you sell needn’t be reported to the ATO as the same order that you bought them. e.g. if you bought multiple parcels in a stock as it went up, then more as it was going down, and you are selling half, you might want to report the ones you sold were the ones when it was most expensive. You would need to track what you did, and the first in/first out is less complicated and makes the CGT discount more achievable. I’m told tools like Navexa can do this tracking for you.

Hi Serena.

To sell down your portfolio, there is naturally going to be the admin of selling each of those holdings which comes with brokerage and potentially capital gains tax if they’re up since you bought them.

VDHG and DHHF are extremely similar, so I’m not sure you gain that much by switching that one.

There’s no magic to it unfortunately. Firstly, turn off DRP immediately for holdings you don’t plan to keep. Wait until you’ve owned for a year as that’ll help reduce CGT and makes sense for no real effort (unless they’re negative then it doesn’t matter).

Consider selling anything speculative that you’ve made a loss on so far – one that maybe you’re not that keen on – to offset some of the gains you might have on other holdings and reduce tax.

I wrote a bit about selling shares in this article which you might find useful: https://pearler.com/explore/learn/blog/should...

All the best