Let’s have a happy new year!
As the year comes to a close in 2024, there are a lot of stories about tax-loss harvesting. This is the act of selling losing stocks before the end of the year to avoid paying taxes on the gains from other investments sold during the year.
Perhaps this seems like a strange idea, since it is most likely better to make money and pay taxes than to lose money and not pay taxes. But if you still want to get out of the lost trades, you can deduct more of your current year’s capital gains than you might be able to do if you sell the dogs next year. The IRS only lets you carry over $3,000 in capital losses each year to offset gains in later years.
In her “Need to Know” column on Christmas Eve, Barbara Kollmeyer shared ideas from Julian Emanuel and the strategists at Evercore ISI. These strategists looked at year-end selling activity and corporate financial reports to come up with a list of stocks, like Nike Inc. NKE -0.68%, that they think will go up in value in 2025.
When selling a tax loss at the end of the year, Mark Hulbert went into the specifics, such as the IRS “wash-sale” rule.
Michael Brush named seven stocks that might go up in value in January after people sell them for tax losses.
| Index or sector | Total return for 2024 | 2023 return | 2022 return | Return since end of 2021 |
| Communication Services | 44.2% | 55.8% | -39.9% | 35.1% |
| Information Technology | 41.7% | 57.8% | -28.2% | 60.6% |
| Consumer Discretionary | 36.1% | 42.4% | -37.0% | 22.1% |
| Financials | 32.7% | 12.1% | -10.5% | 33.1% |
| Utilities | 24.4% | -7.1% | 1.6% | 17.4% |
| Industrials | 19.7% | 18.1% | -5.5% | 33.7% |
| Consumer Staples | 16.8% | 0.5% | -0.6% | 16.6% |
| Real Estate | 5.8% | 12.4% | -26.1% | -12.2% |
| Energy | 4.4% | -1.3% | 65.7% | 70.7% |
| Health Care | 4.1% | 2.1% | -2.0% | 4.2% |
| Materials | 1.5% | 12.5% | -12.3% | 0.2% |
| S&P 500 | 28.3% | 26.3% | -18.1% | 32.7% |
| Healthcare | ||||
