In an article for InsuranceNews, Ayo Mseka shares some tips on what advisors should do during the summer when existing clients are hard to reach, and prospecting for new clients is even tougher. 

According to Brian Haney, advisors should embrace the downtime and use it as an opportunity to reassess your practice and client relationships. It’s also a time for longer-term planning and thinking about the firm’s future. It can also be used to refine processes and ensure that daily tasks are aligned with the long-term vision.

Another recommendation is to use the summer months to invest in building new relationships and deepen relationships with existing clients. This can include activities that involve the client and their family and even induce them to invite other potential prospects. 

The final recommendation is to embrace the downtime and ‘bank’ some rest and leisure time especially given that the pace and intensity of work will increase once summer ends. But, the summer also does offer some unique opportunities for client relationships or prospecting efforts given the abundance of sponsorship opportunities during the summer months for events, concerts, or festivals. 

Finsum: The summer months are typically slow for financial advisors. Here are some recommendations to best take advantage of this period.

Charles Schwab shared its midyear outlook for fixed income. It notes that the asset class has been unusually volatile despite not changing much in terms of fundamentals and monetary policy.  

In the second-half of the year, Schwab sees Treasuries gradually strengthening, particularly on the short-end of the curve. So far, longer-term Treasuries have started to outperform, while shorter-term notes have weakened due to the Fed’s continued hikes. 

However, the firm sees strength across the board in response to slowing inflation and the end of the Fed’s rate hikes due to a weakening global economy. While it anticipates a pause in Fed policy imminently, it believes that the next rate cut cycle will also quickly begin as rates at these levels are quite restrictive especially in an environment of lower inflation.

Further, Schwab believes that longer-term trends are also supportive of fixed income given that fiscal policy will be contractionary, the manufacturing sector is in a recession, wage growth is slowing, and key drivers of inflation such as food, used cars, and energy have also normalized. Loosening Fed policy and falling inflation will be strong tailwinds for fixed income. 

Finsum: Charles Schwab shared its second-half outlook for fixed income. Overall, the firm is bullish and believes that underlying trends of fiscal policy, monetary policy, and inflation are supportive.

In an article for ETFTrends, James Comtois discusses how direct indexing can help investors reduce their tax bill by harvesting tax losses which then can be used to offset capital gains in other accounts. The proceeds from these sales are used to make investments in assets with similar factor scores to ensure consistency with benchmarks.

However, tax-loss harvesting is not a strategy that can be used by investing in an ETF or a mutual fund. In fact, direct indexing is one of the main ways that investors can maximize tax-loss harvesting. This is because with direct indexing, investors own the actual components of an index. It also allows for greater customization as advisors or investors can choose to alter the holdings to suit their personal situation.

At regular intervals, the portfolio is scanned for tax-loss opportunities. By automating the process, it ensures that opportunities aren’t missed to lower an investors’ tax bill. Increasing the frequency of these scans also leads to more alpha. According to research, tax-loss harvesting can add between 20 to 100 basis points of performance. 

Finsum: One of the main benefits of direct indexing is that it allows investors to reduce their tax liability while allowing investors to realize the benefits of index investing.