Here's Your Year-End Portfolio Planning Checklist for 2023

4. Potential Changes to Holdings

Related to rebalancing is a review of clients’ portfolio holdings to see if any changes need to be made. This might involve reviewing the performance of individual stocks and bonds, mutual funds and ETFs against their benchmarks and your expectations. It might also involve a different approach in some cases.

For example, with interest rates where they are, it might make sense to move some of your client’s allocation to fixed income from mutual funds and ETFs to individual bonds, CDs and similar vehicles. Perhaps a bond ladder is appropriate for some or all fixed income allocation. And with rates where they are, money market funds might be a solid alternative at least in the near term.

In the case of stocks, some holdings might be pushing the upper end of the price range that you deem reasonable. Or if a client has a large position in an employer’s stock through stock-based compensation, this might be a good time to reduce that position to avoid an over-concentration in these shares.

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