Offloading inherited stocks... how do you decide which go first?

[jeromedawg]

Hey all,

I have a number of stocks, most of which are inherited, and I'm trying to figure out what to offload first for a charitable donation and if there are any 'guidelines' on this... Do you guys look at analyst ratings as one benchmark for this? Currently none of these stocks are "losers" so I won't get any tax harvest write-offs. So am I looking for the "biggest gainer"? Or is it more like "just close your eyes and pick?" lol.

[BeanCounter]

If you recently inherited them there won’t be much gains or losses because the stocks value stepped up or down to market value at the date the original owner died. So your basis of the inherited stocks is that new market value. So now is the perfect time to get rid of anything that does fit into your portfolio or that you don’t think will perform well in the future, because you don’t have any taxable gains to worry about, or losses to harvest.

[reeshau]

Agreed.  If you aren't comfortable with owning individual stocks long-term--if you can't now and don't want to learn how to value them--then now is the perfect time to sell them all and invest in what you know, before you have to worry about capital gains.

[jeromedawg]

Some of these I've had for many years. BTW: since I would be donating these per charity, there would be no capital gains incurred afaik. BTW: the amount of stocks I'd be selling off isn't *huge* per se... maybe a few grand at most and this would be collectively for the year. I was intending to do this on a more regular basis but am lumping it at the end of the year for 'catch-up'