December pick for the WylieMoney Slowly portfolio

The December pick for the WylieMoney Slowly portfolio is a Large Cap Blend fund. I have been adding one fund each month since May. Actually buying funds towards the end of the year can be tricky. Since these are hypothetical investments I have not been paying too much attention to when capital gains distributions are made, but it is not a good idea to buy a mutual fund for a taxable account right before a capital gains distribution. You end up paying taxes on gains that you did not make yourself.

There are lots of opinions about this topic but the bottom line is, if a capital gain distribution occurs in a fund you own in a taxable account, you will owe taxes on the distribution. So the factors to consider in your decision when to buy the fund should include when the distribution will happen.

One common misconception is that all mutual fund distributions take place in December. SSEMX, for example, made a distribution in mid-October.

Anyway, you can research when capital gains distributions will occur online on the mutual fund company's website, and even if a fund has not posted the distribution date, check when the fund made its distribution the year before to get a sense and contact the mutual fund company to see if you can get more info.

So now to see if BIGRX Amer. Ctry Inc & Grth (My original post) is still the best option in this category.

The answer is no. BIGRX American Century Income and GROWTH is not categorized as a Large Cap Blend Fund anymore and it has not performed as well as several other options.

A few funds show up in a search in Etrade's fund screener for Large Cap Blend funds when I screen for only no-load funds with turnover less than 75% and expenses less than 1%. A few Janus funds show up but when I look them up on Morningstar, they look more like Large Cap Growth funds than Blend funds (a mix of growth and value stocks). Plus, I already have several Janus funds and diversity among fund companies is important in addition to diversity across categories and investment types (Stocks, bonds, etc.).

So my next addition to the WylieMoney Slowly portfolio is SLASX, Selected American Shares S. With a crazy low turnover of 9%, and relatively low expense ratio of 0.9% this funds' solid, consistent performance makes it a good pick.

The low turnover should translate into a very small capital gains distribution (if it makes on at all). The fund's prospectus specifies that the distribution will happen in December.

So on the first seriously down day in December, I will add $2500 in SLASX to the hypothetical WylieMoney Slowly portfolio.