Funds as 'Placeholders' in Tax-Loss Sales

It's been a grim year for anyone holding Amazon (AMZN Quote), eBay(EBAY Quote) or Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) shares. They survived the dot-com bust together. Now they're sinking together. Nearest ETF equivalent: the HOLDRS Internet exchange-traded fund (HHH Quote). At last count, it was 29% invested in eBay, 26% in Yahoo! and 13% in Amazon.

Looking to take your loss in Intel(INTC Quote)? A mutual fund, (SMPIX Quote)ProFunds Semiconductor Ultra Sector, has 20% of its money in the stock and the rest across correlated companies in the industry. The HOLDRS Semiconductor ETF (SMH Quote) also tracks Intel, and its peers, pretty well.

Mobile-technology plays Qualcomm(QCOM Quote) or Motorola(MOT Quote) are both down for the year. One mutual fund has done a pretty good job of tracking both: (FSDCX Quote)Fidelity's Select Communications Equipment fund.

It's been a year to forget for UnitedHealth(UNH Quote), the stock-option-backdating company that also runs hospitals. Barclays' Dow Jones US Health Care Providers iShare (IHF Quote) is 14% exposed to the stock -- and since its launch this spring, has correlated extremely closely to its performance.

For investors in medical devices companies Medtronic(MDT Quote) and St Jude (STJ Quote), iShares' Dow Jones US Medical Devices Index (IHI Quote) offers the closest proxy. Note: It also has 8% of its money in Boston Scientific(BSX Quote), but that company's specific troubles mean you're on your own.

And this has been a bad year for investors in some of the leading biotech companies. The Nasdaq Biotechnology Index iShare (IBB Quote) has done the best job of tracking Amgen(AMGN Quote), while if you're looking to take your loss in Genzyme(GENZ Quote), I'd go for the HOLDRs Biotech fund (BBH Quote) instead.