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In This Edition
You're Invited: Investing Moves to Boost After-Tax Returns
You've worked hard to fund your portfolio — your investment strategy should work just as hard to maximize your after-tax returns.
On September 17, join Range's CFPs and CPAs live for the practical moves that put more of your returns back in your pocket.
What we'll cover:
Investment moves to maximize your after-tax returns
How tax-loss harvesting can lower the taxes you owe
When direct indexing works (and when it doesn't)
How to build a diversified portfolio that reduces tax drag.
Range is all-in-one AI wealth management — tax, investments, retirement, and estate in one place. Bring your questions for the live Q&A. Free to attend, and seats are limited.
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Regret as a Tool
This week I missed a move on a stock I had mapped out and was ready to go. I was actually in the trade, then psyched myself out and exited, only to watch it take off without me. 😫
I felt that familiar pang of regret, but instead of letting one emotional decision lead to another, I noticed the regret and kept moving forward with my process. I analyzed where the next best risk-reward opportunity was and I kept it moving.
This got me thinking about regret in general, because regret can actually be useful if you take the time to figure out what created it.
Future regrets can easily be prevented by
doing something about them now.
When you feel regret, instead of only sitting in that gut-punch feeling, ask yourself what could have prevented it.
For example:
You ignored your stop and what could have been a manageable loss turned into a disaster. What made you stay, and what needs to change before the next trade?
You watched several stocks move without you, got tired of missing out, and jumped into something without your criteria having been met. Maybe the regret from everything you had already missed is what pushed you to chase the next one. How could you prevent missing the next trade? Are you pre-planning your trades or just making decisions when the market is open?
Your profit target was hit, but you wanted to see if you could get a little more, only to watch your profits evaporate on a reversal. Why didn’t you honor your take-profit level? Do you sometimes see a stock run further, but you haven’t done the work to gauge which setups have a higher probability of traveling further?
I don’t say any of this to make you beat yourself up over what already happened, but it’s great data. Look into the regret and ask:
Was there something I could have done earlier that would have made this outcome less likely?
And alternatively, use this exercise for future planning… What could you regret next week that you can do something about today? This works for trading and in life.
Maybe you have a guest coming to stay with you next weekend and you’ll be scrambling around the house the night before. What can you get done now?
What could you regret a year from now? Maybe you keep saying you want to take trading seriously, but you still aren’t documenting your trades, reviewing your decisions, or doing the work that would actually show you where you need to improve.
What about ten years from now? Maybe you have been thinking about building a business for years...and ten years from now the regret won’t be that it didn’t work, it will be that you never really started.
Not everything is in your control, and you can’t prevent every regret. But there are plenty of things we already know we’re going to wish we had handled differently.
These are opportunities to take advantage of the now.
SPX Review & Outlook
SPX is still trading inside the higher range it moved into at the beginning of August. What initially looked like it could be brief digestion before another move higher has developed into a longer sideways range, with price continuing to rotate between the upper and lower areas.
Last week SPX came back into the bottom of that range and briefly undercut it on Thursday, with a low of 7,580. Friday then gapped back up, returning the action back inside the range.
SPX Daily Chart
Coming into this week, the short-term structure favors another move toward the upper part of the range, with 7,745 as the next area to work through, but let’s keep our objectivity by reviewing the following levels.
Levels for the Week Ahead
7,745: Price has reacted around this area several times since August. If SPX pushes back up here, I want to see whether we can move through it or start rolling over again.
7,774: A move through 7,745 brings us back toward the upper part of the range. Breaking and holding above 7,774 would be a stronger sign that SPX is starting to move out of this sideways structure.
7,610–7,630: This remains the lower part of the range. If price rotates back down again, the response here will tell us whether buyers continue holding the area or selling starts to build.
Below the range / 50 SMA: If SPX starts losing the lower range and the 50 SMA underneath it, I’d view that as a more significant change in structure and would start looking for a deeper move lower.
For now, SPX is still range-bound. The short-term structure favors another push toward the upper part of the range, but the bigger question remains whether price can finally move through the levels above or continues rotating inside this area. Because as I always say, if there is an area above we consistently fail to break through, we will likely see a deeper breakdown first.
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