SBI - selling mutual funds

[Azrael]

Hi everyone,

I would really appreciate some help with trying to understand the process and associated costs involved when selling mutual funds. I am using SBI and have purchased a small amount of 三菱ＵＦＪ国際－ｅＭＡＸＩＳ　Ｓｌｉｍ米国株式（Ｓ＆Ｐ５００）outside of my NISA allocation over recent months. Firstly, when I go to sell the fund, I can’t see an option to sell by quantity (only by yen amount). Is that standard practice? Secondly, the 注文可能額 (orderable amount?) (JPY 156,598) I see listed is markedly lower than the valuation of my holdings in this fund (評価額) shown on my Portfolio page (JPY 164,842). Is the difference due to taxes and fees or is there some form of early withdrawal penalty, as the difference between the two numbers in percentage terms is large. My Japanese isn’t brilliant though I have looked at SBI’s FAQ page and the fund prospectus but couldn’t find anything about this. I am pretty new to investing so please be gentle with me if I am missing anything obvious!

Thanks very much for any help you can provide!

[adamu]

Interesting. I've never actually sold a fund, so I'm not sure either.

I just had a look, and it seems the places you can order by fund quantity rather than value are quite restricted. You can't do it at all in a NISA. It seems that if you do use it, you are restricted to buying/selling in 10,000 blocks. I'm not 100% sure, but it might be that funds that are set to reinvest have this option disabled. All of mine are and I don't want to change it, so I can't check

The help page says that you are restricted to specifying up to 95% of the total amount of the fund at its value on the previous working day. This is probably to allow for fluctuations between the price when you place the order, and when the fund is actually sold. So if the price drops a bit, there is still a good chance of the order going through and you getting the amount of money you expect. You can select 全額 (NOT 金額) to sell all of the fund at once without a buffer though.

[Azrael]

Thanks very much adamu, that's really helpful. The amount I could sell is indeed 95% of the valuation in my Portfolio page which makes sense, as you say, accounting for fluctuations (I had actually read this somewhere a while back on their website but had forgotten about that). I suppose given the nature of mutual funds, they don't really lend themselves to trading so the limited selling options on the website probably makes sense. I presume I would be better placed looking at ETFs for actively trading funds but I didn't want to bring currency exchange into the equation. Anyway, appreciate you having a look at this. Still very much learning here!

[Kanto]

Thanks very much adamu, that's really helpful. The amount I could sell is indeed 95% of the valuation in my Portfolio page which makes sense, as you say, accounting for fluctuations (I had actually read this somewhere a while back on their website but had forgotten about that). I suppose given the nature of mutual funds, they don't really lend themselves to trading so the limited selling options on the website probably makes sense. I presume I would be better placed looking at ETFs for actively trading funds but I didn't want to bring currency exchange into the equation. Anyway, appreciate you having a look at this. Still very much learning here!

I would not want to trade mutual funds actively. They are only traded once per day, after the markets have closed.

Medium or long term I think would be better.

[Azrael]

Thanks Kanto. Appreciate the advice.