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A
On today's Talking Wealth, I'm joined by Aaron Stanhope. Aaron is the chief investment strategist at o' Shaughnessy Asset Management. We're talking about how advisors can use direct and custom indexing, creating tax elements on behalf of their clients, diversifying concentrated stock positions and more. Aaron, welcome to the show.
B
Thanks for having me, Ben.
A
So my initial foray into understanding oshaughtsy asset management was I read what works on Wall street right at the begin my career. It was like my initial foray into factor investing. And that is the background of o' Shaughnessy Asset Management. Jim o' Shaughnessy started it. You guys have been doing the factor investing thing for a long time. So I'm curious if you could just tell the story about how o' Shaughnessy went from this primarily quant factor driven investment manager who worked mostly with, what would you say, family offices, institutions essentially.
B
Yeah, that's about right.
A
So how did you go from that stage to now working with, with financial advisors and being more of a total portfolio management solution? Like what's the arc here?
B
I think ultimately it goes back to really the financial crisis. So Jim and the team were at Bear Stearns and one of the dynamics of being at a large firm like that and being just a team at the firm is you really don't get to control your spend on your things like your research platform, which is pretty important for quantitative investors. So the team really, they spun out, fortunately, never bet against the luck of the Irish. About six months those hedge funds started going south and they really left to establish their own firm and build the research platform. That was one of the key dynamics. And since then we've kind of just moved forward with this legacy of as sort of like ripping out every third party system that influences our process, whether it's orders, management systems, execution systems, the trading platform, the research platform. And what that ultimately allowed us to do is we were kind of this weird quantitative equity manager in that we managed lots of separately managed accounts. Starting around that time, most firms, boutique firms at our size were typically managing commingled funds, whether that be in fund form or hedge funds. And so we kind of had this operational platform in addition to the research platform, where we had the scale to accommodate SMAs and customization. And so then around 2017 or so, Patrick O' Shaughnessy took over as CEO and kind of said, how do we use all this technology that we've built that's internal to us and kind of turn it inside out and give allocators the keys to the kingdom effectively. That's kind of.
A
Cause in a lot of ways you guys are like a software company too. You're an investment management platform, but you're also this trading software operational. Like software is a big part of what you guys do.
B
Yeah, technology is huge. It enables everything that we're able to do. I mean the ethos is really customization at scale and you can only do that with technology.
A
Right. So you said instead of, listen, instead of us just being the manager for your small cap value or your large cap growth, your large capital whatever it is, we can build a platform, do it at all. Because we're trading all these different accounts anyway. And I feel like there are still people who don't quite understand direct indexing or customer indexing. Or maybe we can start there like, because I. Both those terms are used. Am I splitting hairs here or is there actually a line in the sand difference between custom and direct indexing?
B
I sort of think as direct indexing as take an S&P 500, you own the individual names. That's the most common implementation of a direct index. And the key really is you own the individual names, you unwrap the wrapper and that unlocks all this tax loss. Harvesting custom indexing takes it a step further to basically say, well, it doesn't just have to be the S&P 500, it could be a factor portfolio, it could be a dividend strategy, it could be us, it could be non us. You can apply tax budgets, you can do ESG screens, all those different layers of dimensionality can be added is what we think of as a custom index.
A
That makes sense. And obviously I think it kind of needs to be said that this stuff wouldn't have, if we tried to do this 20 years ago, it would have been cost prohibitive. It wouldn't have really made as much sense because of the trading. So the fact that commissions. It's so funny, the timing you mentioned, the luck of the Irish, the fact that you all decided to roll this out right as commissions were going to zero. The timing of it really was perfect. Right as that happened. It was right.
B
Yeah. We rolled it out in September of 2019 and on I'm pretty sure it was October 2nd of 2019. The major custodial firms started announcing that they were going to bring commissions to zero. And to your point, prior to that, direct indexing was really relegated to the ultra high net worth investors because every time you step in to do a harvesting trade, you had an $8 ticket charge or whatever it was for those Platforms, all of a sudden that goes away and all that embedded cost goes away and your floor for direct indexing gets dramatically lower.
A
So again, there are people who still don't quite understand custom indirect indexing. And I know some people in the ETF world, like, what is the point of this stuff if ETFs exist? And I'll be honest, for people who have no experience dealing with this stuff, it's a little more complicated to explain. But once you get it, you really get it. Like we've had clients who, once you bring them through the process and they go, wait, so I'm owning all the individual stocks instead of just one fund or eight funds or whatever it is, that seems like a lot. My statements are going to be longer. But then we've had clients who say like, once they realize what you can do with it, and you mentioned the customization and tax loss and we're going to get into all that stuff. But they've said, well, why would anyone do anything else if you can do it like this, right? So did you have like a light bulb moment where you go, oh, okay, this can add a lot of value using this customization in a number of different ways. Like what was the light bulb moment for you for direct indexing?
B
I mean really, it's just all about maximizing after tax wealth. And it depends obviously on what the client's individual tax situation is. There are some clients where maybe their tax rates are not high enough and an ETF portfolio makes perfect sense. There are other clients where the fact that 40% of most stocks across the broad market are down in a calendar year, the ability to step in and harvest those losses to defer gain realization down the road is incredibly powerful. So it really, it kind of just depends on the specific situation. But also there are many clients that may be invested in the S&P 500, but they either want to customize based on values, or maybe they want a value tilt or a growth tilt or a momentum tilt, or maybe they don't want packaged product for a global allocation. Maybe they want to overweight em. So you can do all of that as you would with an ETF portfolio. You just own the underlying names and you get the added benefit of that 50 to 100 basis points or whatever it is of tax alpha that ultimately adds to after tax returns.
A
Yeah, and I think the cool thing too is, hey, I come to my advisor and 90% of my net worth is in Google. I want no more technology shares or I want no Google or whatever. Like the ability to look at the sector or industry level or the individual stock level and give me the total stock market index fund. But take technology out because I'm already, I'm set there. More than set there. The ability to do that on an individual basis is really cool and obviously you could get yourself into trouble there. But you guys have also created these tax budgets and maybe I should have said that at the start. We've been a user of the platform since the beginning, so I'm talking our own book here. But I think it's helpful to have the understanding of that. So let's talk about tax loss harvesting because that is the one that people hear about it, they go, oh, okay, this makes a lot of sense. Just give me the general thesis behind tax loss harvesting at the individual security level.
B
So the easiest way to think about it is for a taxable investor, you want to harvest losses, which then allows you to bank those losses to pair against any gain realization in the future. So what you're allowing the account to do is to compound at higher rates in advance of paying taxes. So in an ironic twist, if you do it right, you actually end up paying more in taxes. But down the road, because your account grew to a higher after tax value,
A
it's almost like you're turning it into a tax deferred account in some ways. Like you're, you're, yeah, you're, you're. The taxes still get paid eventually. This isn't magic, but you're the fact that you can push the taxes off into the future. That's in a lot of compounding to happen without taking the taxes out. That's the, that's where the magic happens.
B
Right, exactly. It is not a tax avoidance strategy. It's a tax deferral strategy that allows you to compound at higher rates.
A
Right. So give me an example of when this would happen. Because I think the most interesting thing is that even when the stock market is up, the number might be something like, I don't know, an average of 30% of individual stocks are still down or something. Right. Like there's always going to be individual names that are down. So if you own an ETF and you own Russell 2000 ETF or S&P 500 ETF, you can harvest losses when those are down. Not just a down year, but you have to be down from your cost basis. Right. Then you can harvest losses, go into a similar fund, but with individual securities. There are individual stocks down all the time. The market is up a little bit this year, but there are certain stocks that are down 40, 50% or whatever.
B
Yeah, I mean the last few years have actually been phenomenal for tax loss harvesting given the fact that since 2022 we've sort of been in this period of periodic, you know, extreme down events, extreme up events, lots of V shaped bottoms. Market volatility is great for tax loss harvesting for when you own individual stock portfolios, it can be for ETFs as well. But to your point, with ETFs there's just, there are fewer opportunities overall. But another thing that's really important is dispersion, which is this idea of the 30 plus percent of stocks are down in a given calendar year. And in the last few years we've actually been in this environment where index volatility has been coming down broadly, but stock dispersion has actually been going way, way up. And so there have been more opportunities recently, particularly with things like that we saw like last year, like the Liberation Day tariffs, what we're seeing right now going on in the Middle east, these are really phenomenal kind of opportunistic loss harvesting opportunities.
A
So it's interesting. So you're a quant, right? So the whole idea of creating factor portfolios that can hopefully outperform the market, that's like what you started on essentially. Right. And it's interesting that I think in the last 10 years the evolution from the client side of the business has been I don't care about outperforming the market as much anymore. I still want to. Right. You, you have active strategies on the platform like you, you still want those to produce value, obviously. But a lot of clients are saying I can't always control when that will happen. Right. Sure. I'm going to mix index and active strategies potentially. But the tax alpha thing is something that I can control. Right. There's, there's more control over it. And so we're starting to get advisor or clients coming to us who understand this stuff and they, they've, they, they understand this is the thing that you can do now. Right. Like I want you to add value on the tax side. Whatever you, you gave the number, whatever it, it ends up being. And it, it varies from year to year obviously, but people want that and people understand it now. And so now we're getting into more complicated strategies with tax loss harvesting. Right. It's not just selling the losers, it's 130, 30 funds. Right. It's where you go long and short. So explain how this stuff is evolving.
B
Well, long, short, tax aware, long, short is how we think about it. Is really just a natural evolution of the direct and custom indexing paradigm where if you think about what we mentioned as kind of the watershed moment of October 2019, well, markets have been annualizing at tremendous rates of return, well above historical rates since then. And so you have a lot of investors entered into direct indexing for sort of the silver bullet and have kind of come in the other end of it, which is that after a few years, if you have, let's say like a $0 tax budget or things of that nature, then you kind of run out of losses to harvest. You just can't harvest as frequently unless the market has a very large downturn, in which case sometimes you can.
A
Again, we had a client come to us who was straight direct indexing and they said, our man. And you know, they're just doing a Russell 3000 or whatever index. Right. They said, our manager, because there's not as much turnover in those. They said, our manager tells us in five years we're probably going to run out of opportunities to harvest losses anymore. That, you know, it's great, we pushed them off, but now what do we do? They came to us and they said, give us a solution. And I think what you're explaining is that that can be the solution.
B
Yeah. So long short is a potential solution. So you take your portfolio, let's say it's worth $100 in capital, we're then going to build a long short overlay where you have $30 in additional long and $30 in additional short. The key mechanical reason that these long short strategies are great for tax loss harvesting, which again is sort of this super normal tax deferral engine is the exposure to the short book in the portfolio. So what's happening is we talked about markets appreciating at 10 percent per year. Well, your short book, it's naturally going to move against you. And so there's a unique feature of positions when you are short, which is that when the positions move against row as an allocation in your portfolio, that's really important because what it means is that you have to step in very often as a long short manager to keep the extensions balanced to realize losses from the short book, you then reallocate that capital to the long side to manage things like tracking error or differences to whatever your target strategy is. So that mechanically is sort of the generation engine for the losses. And, and then how you help to manage staying true to the strategy on the long side as well.
A
Now, I mentioned that there are people coming to us with this. There are also Clients who this is way over their head and advisors too, who go, wait a minute, so we're talking margin, right? You're gonna be shorting stocks. Some advisors are gonna go, this is way too complicated for me to explain, to understand like who is this? Who do you think this is most for? Is there a certain tax budget this is for? Because obviously this just increases your opportunities to harvest more losses and it kind of speeds up the process. So like which type of clients are this for? Which type of advisors do you recommend this for?
B
So I think the number one question that clients and advisors need to think about is is there a use for the losses? So we talked about one sort of reason which might be an ossified direct index. So how do we get that loss harvesting going again? That's kind of number one. Number two could be something like a client has lots of other gains that are spun off by another portion of their portfolio where you could use the losses against that. Other reasons might be like concentrated position work downs or there's a large capital gain event in the future that they want to bank some losses in advance of. So the key is really do I have a use for the losses? Long tax aware long. Short sounds great. But if you don't have a use for the losses outside of that portfolio, if you, you're going to be paying a higher fee in those financing costs and that complexity to really just generate this cost of losses that you don't necessarily have a use for, how valuable is that? You know, that's up to the advisor and the end investor. But that's really the first critical question. Second which you brought up is the complexity. It's a more complicated onboarding process. There are only certain custodians that do it, there are only certain asset managers that do it. And there are those costs that are involved as, as well. There's a third thing that's really, really important as well, which is, you know, when you, as you all know, when you get into the tax realm, everything gets complicated really, really quickly.
A
Yeah.
B
And so when you are everybody, most investors are familiar with things like wash sale rules about not trading securities within a 30 day window. There's another layer to that associated with tax aware long short, which is referred to as shorting against the box. You can't be long and short the same securities at the same time because when you do that the losses get disallow. That's different than a wash sale where they just get deferred until you close out the position effectively. That becomes important because there are some clients that say, well, I want my direct Index account or my exposure over here, but I also have this active manager that I also want to allocate to. So there's a little bit of restructuring of the assets that also needs to occur to just kind of, you know, dot the T's and cross the I's.
A
And I think the important point you're making here, that we've realized as advisors working with you on the technology and platform side of things, is that financial advisors play a really, really important role in this process. Your technology is amazing, but I strongly believe that this stuff is, and I don't know if it ever will be for DIY investors, like just doing this yourself, because you need someone at the wheel making the decision who understands this stuff. You need someone who knows, like, when to turn the dials up and when to turn them down. And understanding the pitfalls and in the implementation of this process is not. It's not like you set it and forget it. It's. It's also an active role where you're. The financial plan is part of the process. Right. To your point, you don't want to do this if you don't have something to offset like you need to have. This has to be part of the financial plan. Where you go, this makes sense to you because of what you have. You know, you're selling a business, you're selling some real estate, or you're selling these other stocks. You have concentrated positions. It's really. It's a solution. Right. But the financial advisor plays a very critical role. I think we've seen that. Like, you have to. It's a process you manage. You don't just turn it on and let it go. Right. It's not just software that you let the algorithm take over for you. Correct?
B
Yeah, 100%. There are all sorts of decisions around, as I mentioned, account structure, what they're comfortable with, different levels of leverage that are involved as well, and how much risk wants to be taken. And another component of it is that with these long, short strategies, particularly for investors, that might be coming from an ossified direct index, that's a passive methodology. Long short strategies necessitate an alpha model. So that's sort of another element to all this that most people come for the tax benefits, they kind of don't realize this, but there needs to be a robust alpha model involved as well. Not necessarily swinging for the fences or anything along those lines. But the manager has to figure out what names to go overweight, underweight versus short and Then there are all sorts of different risk constraints that can be applied to help trim the tails on the performance spectrum as well.
A
So how do you think about that on the long short side of things? Because you're right, you have to pick the stocks that you're going extra long and extra short for. So you have your core portfolio. Now then are you implementing your factors on a long and short? Right, we're going long the stocks that screen highly on these things and then short the stocks that screen low on these things. Is that how you're looking at it?
B
I'd say broadly that's accurate. So we're going to assess every stock in whatever the universe is, whether it's US Large cap or US all cap. The stocks that rank highly, we're going to try and overweight. It's relative to an index weight. So something like the Russell 1000 or Russell 3000 and we'll set constraints on what those active weights are. We'll do sector constraints, we'll do industry constraints. If it's global, we'll think about regions and countries as well. And then there's some kind of specific stuff around shorting as well. Because the challenge with shorting is there's an asymmetric risk and, and you can wake up one morning and all of a sudden somebody had a poor earnings announcement or some material event and all of a sudden the Stock is up 200%. So there are different considerations that have to be baked in that are much more onerous than just a traditional long only portfolio. Because the thing that is the engine for the tax loss harvesting is the thing that can bite your pre tax returns as well. So you just have to be very cognizant of those things and have experience doing it.
A
Right. And this is the stuff that maybe clients don't care about as much, but the trading implementation is big too. Right. Like putting these positions on is not something that's easy for someone to do. It's not just the push of a button. It's you have to understand the liquidity constraints behind these things because as you mentioned, you have to kind of manage around these positions. So like the trading operational aspect, I think that's a big benefit that you all provide to advisors is that it takes that off of their plate. They're not the ones putting these positions on. Right. It's you and your team that are doing it on behalf of the advisor who has given sort of the instructions.
B
Absolutely. The amount of short relative to the float is changing all the time. The amount of days of liquidity that are available. Inventories of custodians are changing, borrow rates for the individual names are changing and can update each day as well. So it is a complex operation to where we originally started around technology. It's all enabled by technology. Typically these strategies are really in the realm of large commingled funds and hedge funds. But the ability to have the scale to do this across many different custodians and be able to trade it at scale, technology is just absolutely critical to getting it right.
A
Now I do think that the long short tax aware strategies, they're gaining some more groundswell. I think it's just going to grow and grow in the future and people are going to be interested in. So if you compared that sort and I know we can't give exact numbers because these things aren't exact, you have to think in ranges or possibilities. But how much more tax harvesting value can you pull out of your portfolio using the long short versus just a typical custom index portfolio that you're applying?
B
So what's interesting about it is in the early years, let's say like a 13030 is actually not tremendously different than a traditional long only direct index with no leverage. The key differentiator is the losses that are generated from the short positions. And, and what that allows is after around like year five or so, depending on the market environment, your loss harvesting actually just continues on. And we've run simulations out 20 plus years and have not found situations where you get to a point of ossification or tax. You don't get that ceiling, you don't get that ceiling. So it's really in the later years that it's tremendously beneficial. Now obviously if you have higher leverage amounts, there's some pretty large, you know, gross exposure amounts. Those are different obviously in the early years. But for most investors I think the key difference is that exposure to the short book in kind of those later years you really don't hit this space of tax lock, right?
A
So you can keep pushing those taxes out further and further. Now one of the things that we've been dealing with clients and in the last two years I've had more conversations about this than anything and it's a bull market problem to have. We have clients who come to us and they say I put money 10 years ago into Nvidia or to Apple or to Meta or one of these stocks that are up huge in Tesla and I have a huge gain. Help me get out of this. I know that I got lucky. And that's the great thing is we have people coming to us and knowing they need to diversify. Listen, I hit the lottery ticket. I made a ton of money in this stock. I've got a really low basis. It could be because they worked there or they just got lucky when the stock picked and they held onto it and they lived through downturns before and they go, I don't want to do that again. I've already got rich, I don't have to get rich twice. And so enough people are recognizing this and they come to us and they say, I know this is a first world problem. Help me get out of this in a tax aware manner. I want to diversify my portfolio. So that's one of the things that you do at Canvas. How do you start with that? Because you don't want to just rip the band aid off of someone and say, hey, here's this huge tax. If you get a new client in as an advisor, you don't want to say, hey, I'm going to change your portfolio to what we want it. And by the way, here's this huge tax bill. Eat it. So how do you help manage those positions?
B
So the key thing really is so long short is one of several great solutions. There are other ways of dealing with them as well. But long short is a great solution for think about it as sort of like opportunistic transitions, opportunistic tax aware transitions where you know, let's say somebody gives us a $10 million position in that Nvidia if we they selected a 13030 strategy. You then build the extensions 3 million long and 3 million short. What that's actually doing is giving you an additional 60% of the value of the capital exposure to a diversifying portfolio of securities. And what you can kind of think of that is like a market neutral overlay effectively where then what you're doing is those two extensions, they're generating losses when they do so you pair that against gain realizations on the concentrated positions. So you've matched gains and losses to gradually bring that portfolio, that concentrated position down over time and you sort of diversify it. So it depends on the market environment. But we've seen situations where someone comes in with a 90% concentrated portfolio and it gets almost totally diversified in a couple quarters all the way to a couple years. It just depends on what the market's doing, what dispersion among other names are looking like. But that tends to be a great way to do it. As I mentioned, it's opportunistic. So it kind of depends on what the market gives to you. Some people will say things like, you know what, I really want to hedge the exposure. So they might do something like an option call or some people want to do exchange funds and things of that nature as well. So there's lots of different solutions for dealing with these types of first world problems.
A
Yeah, but you're right. And it's an advisor thing too, where you have to work with the trade offs of the client. Because some clients also say, man, this stock has been so good to me. I want this to take five years to get me out. Like, I want to like give myself some more upside. I want to sell a little bit each year. And so you guys have the ability to create a tax budget or a plan, right? Yes. And you can also again, turn the dial depending on what the market does. Right. If, if market goes for you or against you, you can either speed up the process or slow it down depending on how the stock is going. So it can also. It's not, it's not an event, it's a, it's a process. But I think it's, it's a good tool to offer clients just some expectations. Right. This is how the process is going to work. And if, if things change, we can make course corrections, but that's the thing. And again, to your point, some people do want to just rip the bandit off and go, let's get this thing over as quickly as possible. And that's when you have this more complicated approach come in and go, okay, here's what you need to do if you want to do this. Right. Because that with adding the 30 and 30, that can speed up the process for the tax loss harvesting more than a simpler director custom index, correct?
B
Yes. Yep.
A
Yeah. Okay, so where else are we going? Because I guess since we've started using Canvas and we were one of the very first users, there's obviously a lot more technology, there's a lot more investment strategies that you guys have implemented. I mean, we kind of bring clients through on the little side panel there. When you're looking at all the dropdown boxes and the different geographies and market caps and strategies within and active versus passive and all these things. There's a ton of different investment strategies. There's the tax aware stuff, there's the values based ESG that you can do. Where else are we headed? What is coming in this space?
B
I'd say the other feature that we've recently launched is the ability to commingle ETF portfolios with individual stock strategies. So that's one, which is really, really powerful because one of the downsides of these individual stock strategies is there are kind of corners of the market like EM or international small cap, where most of our clients can't get access to ordinary shares. So the ability to sort of complete a full model, that's an interesting place. I mentioned some option strategies. That's another one as well. Hedged equity covered calls on certain portfolios. And then we expect to take long, short. In this similar direction that we went from direct indexing to custom indexing would be a more customized methodology where you have the ability to look at strategies that are available on the platform, set your own allocations to those, and then build a long short extension using that as well. So a couple things in the works
A
right now, that's the important thing that we didn't really mention is that you as the advisor, pick the exposure. You're not out there. O' Shaughnessy is not saying, here's the model you're going to invest in. Right. It's, it's more. You have the ability to pick and choose. And we came to you with our exposure. We said, these are our portfolios, these are our models. You recreate it using your platform and you say, all right, here's the exposures you currently have. Here's the exposures you're going to have now. So it's not like you're telling the advisors this is how you're going to invest. It's called canvas for a reason, because it's a blank canvas. Right. You have the ability to pick and choose and create models for your clients or your different subsets of clients. And that's the cool thing about it, is that no two advisors are exactly the same for you. Right. I'm sure most clients aren't even the same. I know you guys have given the numbers before, but there's thousands and thousands of different iterations of portfolios because of the way that advisors can customize these for clients.
B
Yeah, exactly. The ethos is really that clients in the market today are not looking for packaged product. They want something to be built around them. And so we just need to be. We just need to provide the tools to you and them in order to be able to construct the portfolio that fits them best.
A
Right. And again, when we first came at this, this was brand new stuff to us too. And we get pitched stuff all the time in this space. Right. We've got a new technology that's going to do this for you, it's going to do that for you. And the light bulb went off for us immediately. But I think there's even more stuff you can do than we realized. And, you know, essentially all of our new client dollars are going into this because the ability to customize is just so, it's, it gives you so much optionality for your clients. And you're right, it's a, it's a way to stand out from a crowd too, to give them something that they might not be able to get off the shelf the way I'm stealing this. But Paul Zodner is one of our, our advisors and his analogy is, listen, you can go to the store and buy a birthday cake off the shelf and you can pick some, you know, you can pick the frosting, you can pick the interior, you can pick the candles, whatever. But if you go to a baker, you can say, hey, we need this to be gluten free. We also need a pink elephant on it and we need it to be two tiered and we need it to be this big. And so I think that's the difference is there's nothing wrong with the off the shelf stuff. Right? And for plenty of people, that's all they need. But for people who need the baker with the different ingredients and the, you know, different instructions, it's a very big leap forward from what we've had. So, yeah, it's, it's very interesting. So why don't you tell people all the advisors watching where they can, we can go to learn more about O'
B
Shaughnessy and Canvas, osam.com, canvas.osam.com are the best places to find out and reach out. We'd love to tell you about it.
A
Perfect. Thanks, Aaron. Ra.
Host: Ben (The Compound)
Guest: Aaron Stanhope, Chief Investment Strategist, O’Shaughnessy Asset Management
Date: April 16, 2026
This episode centers on how advisors can leverage direct and custom indexing—with a particular focus on tax loss harvesting and tax alpha—to create tailored portfolio management solutions for clients. Ben and Aaron discuss the evolution of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management (OSAM), the technological innovations that make personalization scalable, the practical how-tos and benefits of tax-aware strategies, and how complex structures like tax-aware long/short overlays help advisors solve real-world client dilemmas such as concentrated stock positions. The conversation also touches on the advisor’s critical role in integrating these strategies into holistic client plans.
The Value of Tax Deferral
“[Tax loss harvesting] is not a tax avoidance strategy. It’s a tax deferral strategy that allows you to compound at higher rates.” – Aaron (08:24)
On Customization
“It's called Canvas for a reason, because it's a blank canvas. You have the ability to pick and choose and create models for your clients or your different subsets of clients.” – Ben (27:58)
On Advisor Importance
“The financial advisor plays a very critical role. I think we've seen that. It's a process you manage. You don't just turn it on and let it go. Right. It's not just software that you let the algorithm take over for you.” – Ben (16:29)
On Direct Indexing’s Accessibility
“Prior to [zero commissions], direct indexing was really relegated to the ultra high net worth investors...all that embedded cost goes away and your floor for direct indexing gets dramatically lower.” – Aaron (04:27)
This episode demystifies tax-aware portfolio management innovations, emphasizing the practical value of direct and custom indexing for modern advisors. As markets and client needs evolve, advanced strategies like tax-aware long/short overlays and highly personalized portfolios are becoming central to wealth management practices. Technology underpins this revolution, but expert human advisors remain indispensable—both in crafting financial plans and navigating complexity for clients' individual goals.