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Forest Hill's Jeff Judge in CNBC: Why mid-year is the best time to review your portfolio taxes
Waiting until Q4 for tax-loss harvesting could cost you. Here is what to look at right now.
By Jeff Judge, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®, Managing Partner, Chesapeake Financial Planners, Forest Hill, MD.
We are now past the halfway point of 2026, and for investors in Harford County and the Baltimore metro, this is actually one of the most useful times of year to look at your portfolio. Not because anything dramatic needs to happen, but because mid-year is when the right moves are still available.
CNBC asked me to weigh in on what investors should be doing right now to keep their portfolios working through the rest of the year. My focus was on taxes, and specifically on the timing problem most people have: they treat tax planning as a December activity.
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If you have positions in a taxable brokerage account that are underwater right now, this is a reasonable time to sell them and use those losses to offset gains you may have realized elsewhere this year. Rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting can work together. The key is avoiding the wash-sale rule, which disallows the loss if you buy back a substantially identical security within 30 days before or after the sale.
For Harford County retirees and pre-retirees, there is another piece worth checking: the 0% long-term capital gains rate. If you are in a low-income year, whether retired, semi-retired, or between other income events, you may qualify to sell appreciated assets at a zero percent federal tax rate on the gain. That window closes when the calendar year does, and most people do not find out they qualified until they are sitting with their accountant in February.
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Neither of these is a guarantee or a recommendation for your specific situation. They are things worth asking about before the year gets away from you.
This piece builds on "Keep your portfolio firing on all cylinders for the rest of 2026 using these steps," published in CNBC (June 2026)
Jeff Judge, CFP®, AEP®, ChFC®, CLU®, is Managing Partner at Chesapeake Financial Planners in Forest Hill, MD. Book an intro call.
