I'm nearing the point where I'm going to drop some dough into one of the Foolish methods (I won't mention which, so as not to distract anyone :-). To do that, I'm going to have to sell off some mutual fund shares. I have varying amounts of shares in three distinct funds, holdings that go as far back as 1990.

A small percentage of my shares have been held for less than six months, and there's a penalty (either broker-imposed or specific to one or more of the funds, offhand I don't remember which) for selling mutual fund shares held shorter than that. I'll leave those alone for the time being, but I can still sell plenty of the rest to fund what I want to do. All of these are in my IRA.

Does it matter which shares I sell? The oldest? The newest? The ones with the best returns? The worst returns? My guess is that in an IRA it doesn't matter since there are no tax consequences.

Thanks,
Piz

Piz,

<<I'm nearing the point where I'm going to drop some dough into one of the Foolish methods (I won't mention which, so as not to distract anyone :-). To do that, I'm going to have to sell off some mutual fund shares. I have varying amounts of shares in three distinct funds, holdings that go as far back as 1990.

A small percentage of my shares have been held for less than six months, and there's a penalty (either broker-imposed or specific to one or more of the funds, offhand I don't remember which) for selling mutual fund shares held shorter than that. I'll leave those alone for the time being, but I can still sell plenty of the rest to fund what I want to do. All of these are in my IRA.

Does it matter which shares I sell? The oldest? The newest? The ones with the best returns? The worst returns? My guess is that in an IRA it doesn't matter since there are no tax consequences.>>

Because the shares are held in an IRA, it makes no difference as to taxes. For that reason, shed the poorest performers first.

Regards….Pixy