Fund equalisation / dividend
"What you are describing is a very specific case of the more general principle of how dividend payments work. Broadly speaking, if you own common shares in a corporation, you are a part owner of that corporation; you have the right to a % of all of that corporation's assets. The value in having that right is ultimately because the corporation will pay you dividends while it operates, and perhaps a final dividend when it liquidates at the end of its life. This is why your shares have value - because they give you ownership of the business itself. Now, assume you own 1k shares in a company with 100M shares, worth a total of $5B. You own 0.001% of the company, and each of your shares is worth $50; the total value of all your shares is $50k. Assume further that the value of the company includes $1B in cash. If the company pays out a dividend of $1B, it will now be only worth $4B. Your shares have just gone down in value by 20%! But, you have a right to 0.001% of the dividend, which equals a $10k cash payment to you. Your personal holdings are now $40k worth of shares, plus $10k in cash. Except for taxes, financial theory states that whether a corporation pays a dividend or not should not impact the value to the individual shareholder.  The difference between a regular corporation and a mutual fund, is that the mutual fund is actually a pool of various investments, and it reports a breakdown of that pool to you in a different way. If you own shares directly in a corporation, the dividends you receive are called 'dividends', even if you bought them 1 minute before the ex-dividend date. But a payment from a mutual fund can be divided between, for example, a flow through of dividends, interest, or a return of capital. If you 'looked inside' your mutual fund you when you bought it, you would see that 40% of its value comes from stock A, 20% comes from stock B, etc etc., including maybe 1% of the value coming from a pile of cash the fund owns at the time you bought your units.  In theory the mutual fund could set aside the cash it holds for current owners only, but then it would need to track everyone's cash-ownership on an individual basis, and there would be thousands of different 'unit classes' based on timing. For simplicity, the mutual fund just says ""yes, when you bought $50k in units, we were 1/3 of the year towards paying out a $10k dividend. So of that $10k dividend, $3,333k of it is assumed to have been cash at the time you bought your shares. Instead of being an actual 'dividend', it is simply a return of capital.""  By doing this, the mutual fund is able to pay you your owed dividend [otherwise you would still have the same number of units but no cash, meaning you would lose overall value], without forcing you to be taxed on that payment. If the mutual fund didn't do this separate reporting, you would have paid $50k to buy $46,667k of shares and $3,333k of cash, and then you would have paid tax on that cash when it was returned to you. Note that this does not ""falsely exaggerate the investment return"", because a return of capital is not earnings; that's why it is reported separately.  Note that a 'close-ended fund' is not a mutual fund, it is actually a single corporation. You own units in a mutual fund, giving you the rights to a proportion of all the fund's various investments. You own shares in a close-ended fund, just as you would own shares in any other corporation. The mutual fund passes along the interest, dividends, etc. from its investments on to you; the close-ended fund may pay dividends directly to its shareholders, based on its own internal dividend policy." Do all/most unit trusts have equalisation policy? It is really that some value of the fund is given to the investor, so the fund value goes down by that much per unit. It depends on the type of mutual funds. For example, there are growth type mutual funds that do not give any dividend and the total value of the fund is reflected in its price. Do the companies whose stocks we owned directly apply equalisation policy on their dividends as well? Why not? As far a stock price is concerned, it usually decrease by the same amount of the dividend payout at ex-date, so in effect, the market in a way does the equalization, the company directly does not do it.
"Nobody knows for sure what ""substantially identical"" means because the IRS hasn't officially defined it. Until they do so, it would come down to the decision of an auditor or a tax court. The rule of thumb that I have always heard is if the funds track the same index, they are probably substantially identical. I think most people wouldn't consider any pair of AGG, CMF, and NYF to be substantially identical, so you should be safe with your tax-loss harvesting strategy." Dividends are not paid immediately upon reception from the companies owned by an ETF. In the case of SPY, they have been paid inconsistently but now presumably quarterly. Taxes  Based on the numbers you quoted (-$360) it doesn't appear that you would have a taxable event if you sell all the shares in the account.  If you only sell some of the shares, to fund the new account, you should specify which shares you want to sell. If you sell only the shares that you bought when share prices were high, then every share you sell could be considered a loss. This will increase your losses. These losses can be deducted from your taxes, though there are limits. Fees Make sure that you understand the fee structure. Some fund families look at the balance of all your accounts to determine your fee level, others treat each fund separately.  Procedure If you were able to get the 10K into the new account in the next few months I would advise not selling the shares. Because it will be 6 to 18 months before you are able to contribute the new funds then rebalancing by selling shares makes more sense. It gets you to your goal quicker.  All the funds you mentioned have low expense ratios, I wouldn't move funds just to chase a the lowest expense ratio. I would look at the steps necessary to get the mix you want in the next few weeks, and then what will be needed moving forward. If the 60/40 or 40/60 split makes you comfortable pick one of them. If you want to be able to control the balance via rebalancing or changing your contribution percentage, then go with two funds. "In case other people arrive at this page wondering whether they should enable automatic reinvestment of dividends and capital gains for taxable (non-retirement) accounts (which is what I was searching for when I first arrived on this page): You might want to review https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Reinvesting_dividends_in_a_taxable_account and http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2011/01/26/why-you-shouldnt-automatically-reinvest-dividends/. The general idea is that--assuming you plan to regularly manually rebalance your portfolio to ensure that all of the ""pieces of the pie"" are the relative sizes that you want--there are approaches you can use to minimize taxes (and also fees, although at Vanguard I don't think that's a concern) if you choose a ""SpecID cost basis"" and manual reinvestment. Then you can go to ""Change your dividends and capital gains distribution elections"" at https://personal.vanguard.com/us/DivCapGainAccountSelection." Well, you can just say that 1 dollar contributed = one share and pay out dividends based on number of shares. That makes it pretty easy to make things fair based. There are pros and cons with this pooling approach. Contrary to what you might have heard, moving money between mutual funds, whether or not in the same family of funds, is a taxable event, assuming, of course, that the funds are not in tax-deferred retirement accounts. About the only thing that is not taxable is moving funds between share classes in the same mutual fund, e.g. a conversion from what Vanguard refers to as Investor Shares to Admiral Shares in the same fund. In some cases, the Admiral Shares may have a considerably different price (for example, Vanguard Health Care Fund Investor Shares (VGHCX) and Admiral Shares (VGHAX) are priced at $215.83 and $91.04 respectively and so changing from one class to the other changes the number of shares owned considerably while the net value of the investment remains unchanged. How and why is this considered fair (and/or legal)? Let's use an analogy.  The issue is not fairness, it is just the rules. The assets you own and the cash you receive are reported differently. If the rules don't make sense, I suggest you hire an adviser that can teach you and help you get the most out of your investments. Does this make sense? I'm concerned that by buying shares with post tax income, I'll have ended up being taxed twice or have increased my taxable income. ... The company will then re-reimburse me for the difference in stock price between the vesting and the purchase share price. Sure.  Assuming you received a 100-share RSU for shares worth $10, and your marginal tax rate is 30% (all made up numbers), either: or So you're in the same spot either way.  You paid $300 to get $1,000 worth of stock. Taxes are the same as well.  The full value of the RSU will count as income either way, and you'll either pay tax on the gains of the 100 shares in your RSU our you'll pay tax on gains on the 70 shares in your RSU and the 30 shares you bought.  Since they're reimbursing you for any difference the cost basis will be the same (although you might get taxed on the reimbursement, but that should be a relatively small amount). This first year I wanted to keep all of the shares, due to tax reasons and because believe the share price will go up. I don't see how this would make a difference from a tax standpoint. You're going to pay tax on the RSU either way - either in shares or in cash.  how does the value of the shares going up make a difference in tax? Additionally I'm concerned that by doing this I'm going to be hit by my bank for GBP->USD exchange fees, foreign money transfer charges, broker purchase fees etc.  That might be true - if that's the case then you need to decide whether to keep fighting or decide if it's worth the transaction costs. If you receive dividends on an investment, those are taxed. See my comment for some discussion of why one might choose an identical fund over an ETF.  As to why someone would choose the higher cost fund in this instance ... The Admiral Shares version of the fund (VFIAX) has the same expense ratio as the ETF but has a minimum investment of $10K.  Some investors may want to eventually own the Admiral Shares fund but do not yet have $10K.  If they begin with the Investor Shares now and then convert to Admiral later, that conversion will be a non-taxable event.  If, however, they start with ETF shares now and then sell them later to buy the fund, that sale will be a taxable event. Vanguard ETFs are only commission-free to Vanguard clients using Vanguard Brokerage Services.  Some investors using other brokers may face all sorts of penalties for purchasing third-party ETFs.  Some retirement plan participants (either at Vanguard or another broker) may not even be allowed to purchase ETFs. "You seem to be assuming that ETFs must all work like the more traditional closed-end funds, where the market price per share tends—based on supply and demand—to significantly deviate from the underlying net asset value per share. The assumption is simplistic. What are traditionally referred to as closed-end funds (CEFs), where unit creation and redemption are very tightly controlled, have been around for a long time, and yes, they do often trade at a premium or discount to NAV because the quantity is inflexible. Yet, what is generally meant when the label ""ETF"" is used (despite CEFs also being both ""exchange-traded"" and ""funds"") are those securities which are not just exchange-traded, and funds, but also typically have two specific characteristics: (a) that they are based on some published index, and (b) that a mechanism exists for shares to be created or redeemed by large market participants. These characteristics facilitate efficient pricing through arbitrage. Essentially, when large market participants notice the price of an ETF diverging from the value of the shares held by the fund, new units of the ETF can get created or redeemed in bulk. The divergence quickly narrows as these participants buy or sell ETF units to capture the difference. So, the persistent premium (sometimes dear) or discount (sometimes deep) one can easily witness in the CEF universe tend not to occur with the typical ETF. Much of the time, prices for ETFs will tend to be very close to their net asset value. However, it isn't always the case, so proceed with some caution anyway. Both CEF and ETF providers generally publish information about their funds online. You will want to find out what is the underlying Net Asset Value (NAV) per share, and then you can determine if the market price trades at a premium or a discount to NAV. Assuming little difference in an ETF's price vs. its NAV, the more interesting question to ask about an ETF then becomes whether the NAV itself is a bargain, or not. That means you'll need to be more concerned with what stocks are in the index the fund tracks, and whether those stocks are a bargain, or not, at their current prices. i.e. The ETF is a basket, so look at each thing in the basket. Of course, most people buy ETFs because they don't want to do this kind of analysis and are happy with market average returns. Even so, sector-based ETFs are often used by traders to buy (or sell) entire sectors that may be undervalued (or overvalued)." "The portfolio described in that post has a blend of small slices of Vanguard sector funds, such as Vanguard Pacific Stock Index (VPACX).  And the theory is that rebalancing across them will give you a good risk-return tradeoff.  (Caveat: I haven't read the book, only the post you link to.) Similar ETFs are available from Vanguard, iShares, and State Street.  If you want to replicate the GFP exactly, pick from them.  (If you have questions about how to match specific funds in Australia, just ask another question.)  So I think you could match it fairly exactly if you wanted to. However, I think trying to exactly replicate the Gone Fishin Portfolio in Australia would not be a good move for most people, for a few reasons: Brokerage and management fees are generally higher in Australia (smaller market), so dividing your investment across ten different securities, and rebalancing, is going to be somewhat more expensive. If you have a ""middle-class-sized"" portfolio of somewhere in the tens of thousands to low millions of dollars, you're cutting it into fairly small slices to manually allocate 5% to various sectors.  To keep brokerage costs low you probably want to buy each ETF only once every one-two years or so.  You also need to keep track of the tax consequences of each of them. If you are earning and spending Australian dollars, and looking at the portfolio in Australian dollars, a lot of those assets are going to move together as the Australian dollar moves, regardless of changes in the underlying assets.  So there is effectively less diversification than you would have in the US. The post doesn't mention the GFP's approach to tax.  I expect they do consider it, but it's not going to be directly applicable to Australia. If you are more interested in implementing the general approach of GFP rather than the specific details, what I would recommend is: The Vanguard and superannuation diversified funds have a very similar internal split to the GFP with a mix of local, first-world and emerging market shares, bonds, and property trusts.  This is pretty much fire-and-forget: contribute every month and they will take care of rebalancing, spreading across asset classes, and tax calculations.  By my calculations the cost is very similar, the diversification is very similar, and it's much easier. The only thing they don't generally cover is a precious metals allocation, and if you want that, just put 5% of your money into the ASX:GOLD ETF, or something similar." The HMRC website says: Stock dividends are treated as income by virtue of CTA10/S1049, and taxable as savings income under Chapter 5 of Part 4 of ITTOIA05 (sections 409 to 414). ITTOIA05 is the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005, and says: 409 Charge to tax on stock dividend income (1) Income tax is charged on stock dividend income. (2) In this Chapter “stock dividend income” means the income that is treated as arising under section 410. 411 Income charged (1) Tax is charged under this Chapter on the amount of stock dividend income treated for income tax purposes as arising in the tax year. (2) That amount is the cash equivalent of the share capital on the issue of which the stock dividend income arises (see section 412), grossed up by reference to the dividend ordinary rate for the tax year. the biggest issue with a pure physical dividend is the cost of transfer. Cash or stock dividends are decentralized **and** easy to transfer ownership, hence the majority of value can be transferred to the shareholder.   If you were to deliver wine to every shareholder, you would have to deduct the cost of transport from the value of the wine dividend, otherwise it becomes value-reductive to shareholders and they'd be better off keeping the dividend as stock value. There are two independent sets of terms we need to define in order to answer your question.  I am trying to understand the difference between Value, Blend, and Growth These are different categories of mutual funds: Value: discounted or undervalued stocks. This is often measured by a difference between the stock's price and the Net Asset Value (NEV). Growth: stocks that fund managers believe are poised for significant growth (increase in stock price and NEV). Blend: a blend of two categories of stocks. In this context it probably refers to a combination of growth and value stocks, but it just depends on the context.  I want to receive dividend and Growth These are ways to receive earnings from a stock or fund. Dividend: a direct cash payment from owning a stock or a fund. Stocks and funds who pay out 100% of their profits don't have any money leftover to grow themselves and either stagnate or shrink. Growth: an increase manifesting itself in capital gains. If a stock or fund pays out zero dividends, then all profits are invested back into the company for fund, increasing its value. If you intend to automatically reinvest dividends, then receiving dividends is essentially the same as receiving profit through capital gains. If you intend to sell stocks or funds periodically to get some extra spending cash, then receiving profits through capital gains is essentially the same as dividends.