Long-Term vs Short-Term Capital Gains
Also called: long term capital gains, short term capital gains, holding period
Gains on assets held longer than a year are long-term and taxed at preferential rates; anything shorter is short-term and taxed as ordinary income. In the US that gap can be more than twenty percentage points, so selling a week before the anniversary is one of the most expensive small mistakes available. The clock starts the day after purchase, and each lot of shares has its own holding period.