Before the ball drops on 2023: Advisors’ year-end checklist

investmentnews.com:

Hold on, financial advisors! Don’t flip that last calendar page just yet. There’s still work to be done.

New Year’s Day may still be a month or so away, but if you listen closely you can practically hear the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” emanating from advisory offices across the country. Wealth managers, like most American workers, are eager to put down their pencils, power down their laptops and call it a year.

And who can blame them for bursting into song, albeit a little early?

The S&P 500, powered by the so-called “Magnificent 7” tech stocks, is up almost 20% for the first 11 months of 2023, an equity return that any client would be thrilled to see on their account statement. And while the iShares Core US Aggregate Bond ETF is down 2.2% year-to-date, it is yielding a healthy 3.2%, which is more than enough to satisfy the coupon-clippers still recovering from years in the low-to-no yield wilderness.

Seriously, after last year’s drubbing across both asset classes, it’s totally understandable that financial advisors are anxious to take a knee and run out the clock with the score lopsided in their favor.

Before popping the cork and kissing 2023 goodbye, however, advisors had better check a few things off their to-do lists, or they could wind up with a whole lot of regrets once 2024 rolls around.

Rob Schultz, senior partner at NWF Advisory, puts two items front and center of his year-end client checklist: required minimum distributions and tax-loss harvesting.

“When it comes to RMDs, we check to make sure we have everything completed, especially considering the recent changes in requirements,” Schultz said. “And this year we are looking at tax-loss harvesting, especially in bond funds. We figure we might as well take