Alright, I've been, watching the news recently.
You're watching the news, seeing some news on, on X,
watching the, the values of things in Robinhood,
just the values of, some of the main things I'm going to talk about
today. Today are gold and silver and copper,
like precious metals, as well as cryptocurrency,
especially Bitcoin. You've seen, if you've seen in the news,
there are some, really, this week,
the last couple of weeks, there's been some major.
major, adjustments in pricing.
So, gold and silver, I think silver in the last month.
Over two has gone up 30,
40%, and then literally today it dropped.
What, 10 or 15% in one day.
It's just crazy. Some of these, these price fluctuations.
So. And Bitcoin, of course,
it's, it's pretty volatile and has jumped around,
I think, in the last, in the few days,
it's dropped 10%. In the last couple of days, it's dropped 10%.
people are expecting it to jump up. Up 100% or whatever,
there's just these massive swings in value.
And so thinking of that. I want to just talk about some of these
ways that you can, you can, so whether you're losing money or gaining the
money. There actually are some tax benefits to that and some tax planning and
strategy opportunities related to all these things.
crazy price fluctuations. So,
if life gives you lemons, let's, let's make some lemonade if,
if you've been hit with some of these losses. So one of the main
topics today will be tax loss harvesting.
If you've had a finance advisor,
you've probably heard that, you may have heard that they do,
that's something they do, that's kind of something they'll advertise that they do,
and I'll explain exactly what it is, but you as an investor,
if you've got some control of your own funds and in the future,
it's just something important. Because there are some really good tax benefits to it.
So to start tax loss harvesting.
To start, you need to have losses And what that means is.
Say you bought a stock, well, it could be a stock,
like a security, it could be, oh,
just like funds. Like funds and ETFs, or it could be a cryptocurrency,
it could be a precious metal. You bought it at one price.
And, say, it's $100.
If that value goes down to, say, $50,
you have a $50 deposit. That's a loss that you've not,
like, if you haven't sold it yet, you haven't realized that loss yet.
So you've not harvested it. If you sold it and just walked away,
you'd have a $50 loss, and in the future we could use that loss.
So let's do much bigger numbers.
So let's say you bought something at $100,000.
And it dropped to $50,000.
Say you bought a cryptocurrency,
put in $100,000. It dropped to $50,000,
or a stock, or a precious metal dropped to $50,000,
and you sold it. You have a $50,000 loss sitting there.
For tax purposes, you can use.
Up to $3,000 of that loss per year to offset any income.
But that loss you can use if you have a capital gain.
So think of the opposite effect, which would be better if you bought something
at $100,000 and it went up to $200,000 and you sold it,
you have a $100,000 capital gain.
If those same things happened in the same year,
so you bought one thing, it dropped by $50,000,
another thing it went up by $100,000. You had a gain of $100,
a loss of $50, when we file taxes, you net those out,
you have a net gain. of $50,000.
So this, this is really what I want you to think of when you're
thinking of tax loss harvesting. So if you've sold a business,
if you've done well on something, you've got some of these gains,
and you've sold it. financial advisors,
or smart investors, or you'd be, looking at this,
you're like, okay, I'm not looking at my broker statement,
or I sold these, this crypto, or these,
precious metals. I've got this gain here.
I don't want to pay tax on that.
What can I do? And so now you're looking at your other things you
own in your portfolio. You know, what could I do to offset the impact
of that tax this year? This is where the tax loss harvesting comes in.
You're going, you know what, I own this fund here,
or this ETF, and it's, it's, it's lost.
It's low, like, the value's low, and I'm currently at an unrealized loss.
You could go, well, I'm just gonna see. Sell that,
this is the harvesting part. I'm gonna sell that,
realize that loss, so in this tax year,
that loss can offset that. So that,
that's tax loss harvesting. And if you do it in a tax year,
remember taxes are calculated in a calendar year.
So if you do it in that year, you don't have to pay tax
on the part of the game. But now,
if you're like to stay in that fund,
there's another part I'm going to talk about. So that's the tax less harvesting
part. And so you can think of that if you're doing tax projections.
The, the other part of this is there's something called the washout.
We've, we've seen people think they're doing tax-lossed harvesting.
and they'll be like, I'm just going to sell this fund or sell this
stock. They sell it and they immediately buy it back.
So if you've dug into this a little, you can do that.
You can, it's a hundred percent legal to be able to sell a stock
and immediately buy it back. But what happens with your loss?
It becomes, the loss ends up washing out and they disallow that
loss. If you don't. Don't wait at least 30 days from until you buy
it again. This is called the wash sale rule.
There's a bunch of. Yeah,
tax law written on it, but it's just completely disallowed and your broker statement
will actually just backfire. Knock out that loss. They're required to track that,
and if it's a security, so ETFs,
mutual funds, direct. ownership of stocks,
like those securities, wash sale rules are not allowed,
so you can't hard sell. Harvest lows, losses,
and then immediately buy it back. There is a workaround where you could,
you could buy one year. Say a mutual fund or some sort of ETF
and sell one version of it and then buy a,
buy another version, like, a completely different fund,
but if it's comparable, that's fine,
as long as it's a different security fund. Security. But it can't be the
exact same one within 30 days, or it offsets that.
Here is an opportunity. It's an though,
for crypto holders and,
precious metals holders. So,
a cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, is not a security.
Precious metals are not securities.
The wash sale rules do not apply.
It's like, I, many of you know, I, I own Bitcoin.
I really like owning Bitcoin, I don't want to get rid of it,
but in the last, three,
four years. Four months, since October, the last three months,
the value's gone down by, like, 20-30%.
Something I could do with my bitcoins, I could sell it,
if I bought something at the high in October, I could sell it really
quickly. Realize a gain, or sorry,
realize a loss, and immediately buy it back,
and there's no wash sale rule that applies. And so,
that's, that's something you can do with cryptocurrency,
any cryptocurrency, or precious metals. But watch out for this,
because if you own cryptocurrency through an ETF,
like, IBIT is one of,
like, I-B-I-T is the ticker symbol, is Bitcoin,
but it's, like, it's an ETF form. What's another one?
I don't know a lot of these. Like, Fidelity has an FBTC,
BTC ETF. There's just several types of these.
If you own it in an ETF, that's the security.
So don't get that confused. You can't do the wash sale loophole I just
mentioned if it's a security or any form of ETF.
Same goes with gold. Silver. If you own actual physical or,
physical gold or silver precious metals that you hold or more if it's kind
of held in custody somewhere, you can do that without the wash sale rules.
You can sell it and then buy it right back, but if you own,
like, an ETF, like a gold ETF, you can't do it with those.
Those are securities.
So just remember that. There is an option.
Opportunity with the wash sale rules, where you can sell something,
realize a loss, and then offset some of your gain.
But, not with securities. So,
hopefully that, hopefully that helps. but that's tax-loss harvesting.
within these just wildly swinging times,
like, I would sit back and just kind of think of what you got
because there's, if you have some gains that you might be paying tax on,
it might be time to start looking at your tax bills harvesting.
If you have a financial, advisor, make sure to talk with them.
Just like, hey, what's my year to date?
Or now, the years, we're at the beginning of 2026,
but it's good to plan ahead for next year, if you,
if you are realizing a gain in any form.
You could even be selling a business. You could use this tax loss harvesting,
strategy to offset some of that. That's it for today.
Have a good rest of the day, guys.
