Manage those pesky corporate actions before EOFY

As we’ve previously written, corporate actions greatly impact portfolio performance. And because your broker doesn’t take corporate actions into account, their performance numbers can mislead you into thinking you’re doing better (or worse) than you actually are. One of our own team members realised this recently when her first share split resulted in her broker completely misreporting her performance (down 48% when she was actually up nearly 5%).

Catch-up on complex corporate actions

Fortunately the vast majority of day-to-day corporate actions (such as dividends and share splits) are automatically incorporated by Sharesight. Having said that, it’s important to review your investment portfolio to ensure that you’ve managed some of the trickier corporate actions that may have required an action on your part.

Here are some of the year’s most popular corporate actions, with step-by-step instructions on how to handle them in Sharesight:

• How to handle the Trustpower demerger
• How to handle the 2016 Telstra buy back
• How to handle the Michael Hill restructure
• How to handle the Stride Investore restructure

Be portfolio proactive

With the end of Australian financial year (EOFY) less than a month away, there’s no better time to do this corporate action “portfolio admin” work. Once done, you’ll be free to take a deep dive into your portfolio to understand how you really performed this year -- and act proactively to maximise returns going forward. This can include deciding whether to sell underperforming shares in order to minimise or even eliminate a tax liability you might otherwise be facing. Sharesight’s Unrealised Capital Gains Report displays the short and long term capital gains and losses of all your holdings -- so it makes it easy to forecast the tax implications of selling before EOFY.

To learn more about how Sharesight handles corporate actions, visit our Corporate Actions help page. And for help with other corporate actions, leave a message on our community forum.

Important Disclaimer: We do not provide tax advice. Make sure you seek appropriate tax advice before implementing the ideas in this post.

FURTHER READING

• 5 easy steps to get organised at EOFY
• How to share your portfolio with your accountant
• 3 ways to save money this EOFY