The market is a great teacher. Like all great teachers, it helps us learn something new everyday. This has been true in my case at the least.
I think there is more to learn during crashes. The majority of whatever I have learnt is during these types of crashes. Both the ones that I lived through (.Com crash, great recession, COVID-19) and the ones that I read about ( the great depression, the Black Monday and so on)
Probably Right?
All through the current COVID-19 crisis, I had written multiple times about staying the course and buying more (See here). I hope you were able to follow my advice and made spectacular returns as a result.
Compress your investments
During the course of this particular crash I learnt something new. The ability to compress your portfolio for maximizing gains.
This is a combination of using the ideas of tax loss harvesting and the benefits of tax advantaged accounts like RRSP, TFSA (Canada), 401K, Roth IRA (USA).
Tax loss Harvesting
Although this is much touted in the industry and especially by several Robo-Advisors. It is much harder to implement and even more so when there is a massive and aggressive crash like we saw in the recent (and ongoing) COVID-19 crash.
Tax loss Harvesting, in essence, is all about using the losses in your investments to offset the gains you may have made in other investments. Note that to realize the benefits there are several conditions that have to be met. Firstly, you should have gains in some investments to be able to offset against the losses. If the majority of your portfolio is in the red, then it makes no sense to implement this. (Sure there is a chance to roll-over the losses in some countries).
The other condition is that you have to wait for at least 30 days before buying the same or similar security.
In a scenario like the COVID-19 crash a month is a LONG time.
So, basically I did not do any sort of tax loss harvesting during this crash. Instead I did something more cool.
I compressed my holdings and moved them into my tax advantaged accounts RRSP, TFSA (Canada), 401K, Roth IRA (USA).
Compression
Let me break down what I mean by this with an example.
Let’s say person B has 100 Shares of Apple at an average buy price of 300$s. More importantly, assume that these shares are in a non-tax advantaged account like a margin account.
Let’s say that B has a tax advantaged account room of 20,000$.
Now, COVID-19 crash happens.
Apple crashes all the way down to 200$s, so B has a loss of 300$-200$ = 100$ a share. So, for 100 shares the loss is 10,000$!!!
The value of B’s shares is now 20,000$.
B can sell the Apple shares in the Margin account and make a contribution to the tax advantaged account and buy the same Apple shares within the tax Advantaged account.
Note that tax loss harvesting cannot be claimed on the ‘loss’ as the same stock was bought back in less than 30 days.
Benefits of doing this
The biggest benefit of doing this is the ability to compress your portfolio using the crash. Then using the sale from the compressed stocks to buy back the same within your tax advantaged accounts.
It is almost like being able to contribute 10,000$ more than the available room. Note that the room is calculated based on the contributions made and not on the appreciation of the investments made.
By selling at a loss, sure B cannot get a tax advantage through harvesting. But, by transferring the holdings into the tax advantaged account B can sell the stock when it appreciates without incurring any capital gains taxes.
Operational tips
Few tips on how to operationalize this. You cannot wait for the sale of stock to settle and then get the cash, make a deposit to your tax advantaged account and then buy. This whole chain can take anywhere between 3-5 days depending on your broker and bank. In a crash the markets are fairly volatile. Even a few hours is a lot of delay.
One way to do this is to create a sort of a pipeline.
Create a buffer amount of 2000$ for example. Put that into your tax advantaged account. Now, buy and sell stock worth 2000$ in both accounts. In this way you can ensure you get the same price in both accounts.
Now when the 2000$ from the sale in the margin account is available. Move it to the tax-advantaged account and repeat the process until all the holdings are transferred through this pipeline.
I did this and given the sharpness of the recovery. The level of compression I was able to achieve is almost 50%!!!
I hope you will be able to take advantage of this as well. If not for now, then for the next time around.