Tax-loss harvesting, in principle, lets investors capitalize on negative performance during periods of market stress.
Tax Day has come and gone, and for many Americans, what is typically a dreaded ritual has been softened by unusually large refunds, thanks to last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). But the end of filing season is not a reason to stop thinking about taxes. For modern investors, tax awareness has become a year-round imperative, and today’s market environment makes that case even more compelling.
Years of breakaway technology stock performance have been rewarding for investors with concentrated positions in U.S. growth equities. However, these gains have locked investors in a set of golden handcuffs. Embedded capital gains in these portfolios are substantial and realizing them would result in a significant tax bill, one large enough to keep many investors perpetually invested simply through inertia. The result has been “portfolio drift”: what started as a 60/40 portfolio in 2019 is now closer to a 70/30.
This problem has grown more acute in recent years as the global opportunity set has evolved. Europe’s interest rate environment has pivoted from negative to positive, underpinning a shift in bank profitability; a fiscally expansionary Japan looks set to meaningfully stimulate domestic growth; emerging Asia, most notably South Korea and Taiwan, has secured a foothold in the global AI infrastructure buildout through lynchpin positions in semiconductor and memory markets; U.S. foreign policy has rapidly changed, prompting nations to increase defense spending; monetary policy assumptions have been upended in the face of energy-driven reinflation; and alternatives, which can effectively solve for “problems” in public markets like positive correlations and lackluster income, have become more accessible.
Shifting a portfolio back toward its original target weights while simultaneously diversifying across a broader investment landscape is therefore a costly proposition.
That said, just as unusually large tax refunds made this year’s filing season more palatable, a tax-aware approach – like harvesting tax-losses – can make portfolio rebalancing more viable. Tax-loss harvesting, in principle, lets investors capitalize on negative performance during periods of market stress. By realizing a loss in a position, reinvesting the proceeds into a security or basket of securities with similar characteristics and deducting that loss from a gain elsewhere, investors can manage their tax bill more effectively.
Recent market performance has warranted a closer look at this strategy. Despite positive year-to-date performance, the S&P 500 has experienced unusually high volatility in 2026, with wide dispersion across sectors and, underneath the hood, big winners and losers at the security level. Indeed, more than half of the companies in the index have sold off 5% or more at some point this year, and 145 are still down at least that much through April 17. This represents a significant opportunity to harvest losses, and with volatility likely to persist, tax-loss harvesting should remain a fruitful strategy.
All told, as investors look to close the gap between the portfolio they have and the one they want, tax awareness is not optional but rather foundational. Moreover, it doesn’t have to be Tax Day to think about taxes.