Industry Performance and Tax-Loss Selling

Ryan M Nov 12, 2014

It’s getting to be that time of year again. No, we are not talking about when we all risk our lives on ladders to put up Christmas lights and spend beyond our means for the holiday season! We are talking about the tax-loss selling season. That odd time of year when investors are sort of happy that they have losing investments so they can offset their tax bill. It can also be a dangerous time where investors cast aside their strategy and portfolio structure for 30 days with fingers crossed that they do not miss the next leg up in the industries they just sold out of. Let’s take a look at year-to-date industry performance and try to pinpoint where Canadian investors might plan to sell:

Industry YTD Performance
Energy 1.0%
Materials -6.4%
Industrials 21.6%
Consumer Discretionary 18.9%
Consumer Staples 28.0%
Financials 10.5%
Healthcare 16.0%
Information Technology 26.1%
Telecomm 7.7%
Utilities 8.9%
TSX 8.4%

 

Looking at the above performance, investors really have two ‘buckets’ that are worth looking at for tax-losses: Energy and Materials. Looking at the year-to-date performance is not only a good way to understand which industries could see some weakness coming up to the holiday season but it also helps to put things into perspective. Energy, believe it or not, is actually up 1% so far this year. If you were reading the news the last month, you would have thought that the energy industry had become obsolete and was heading to zero. If you went all in at the top of the energy market, sure the recent declines would have hurt but if you held a diversified portfolio with a 10% to 15% energy weighting, you probably are not in that bad of shape!  So while the energy sector is a tax loss selling candidate, it may not be as glaring of a red line on statements that many are expecting.

That leaves us with materials, down over 6%. The only problem with materials is that since it has been such an unloved sector over the last five years, we would question if there were many out there that are sitting on significant unrealized losses in this area. Last year, it was pretty much the only industry that had anything worth selling for tax purposes and it is looking like a similar situation this year. You have to wonder if investors would be concerned about missing a bounce at this point with valuations and sentiment so low. So while we think it is an area to consider, we don’t know if we would be expecting much of a tax-loss selling impact in the materials sector either.

Reflecting on the year-to-date performance is interesting because as long as you were diversified, you probably did ok. The performance also shows how heavily weighted the TSX is to both energy and materials as seven out of 10 sectors actually outperformed the broad TSX and offset some quite strong performance in other industries. All in all, there are some opportunities to reduce your tax bill but we would not expect much of an impact this year (or at all if you believe in efficient markets) and would imagine it will be a pretty tough trade to profit from for most investors after including transaction costs, missed dividends and the potential to miss out on future gains.

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Ryan
Nov 17, 2014
Any bit of news can really make Avigilon move so we would be reluctant to try to use it for a tax loss, if you intend to buy back, as you could miss out on some good returns. Gold is likely the safer call as the whole sector is hated by almost everyone. If you were worried about missing out on a bounce in materials, you could always replace the sock exposure with a gold ETF of some kind. That way you keep exposure to the asset class while allowing the tax loss to take effect.
D
Dominic
Nov 16, 2014
Hi Rian,

Just found this interesting article. I was just on the phone with my brother who is also a 5i member. We went over some of each other holdings trying to find the best tax loss candidate we have. He said he has some yamana gold and avigilon. I told him I would be nervous risking avo . But yamana... Here is a question about yamana and gold in general. What do you think of the gold sector as a tax loss this time?

Dominic