Direct Indexing Before You Sign : A Practical Guide to Fees, Tax-Loss Harvesting, Transition Costs and Portfolio Decisions
Overview
Understand the cost of direct indexing before committing your money.
Direct indexing gives investors individual share ownership, portfolio customisation and opportunities for tax-loss harvesting. Its value depends on the investor's tax circumstances, existing holdings, fees and financial goals. Examine what the account will cost, how it operates and which assumptions support projected benefits.
Direct Indexing Before You Sign provides a practical framework for evaluating personalised index portfolios and comparing them with ETFs, mutual funds and continued ownership of existing shares. Alessio Faccia connects investment decisions with taxes, contracts and the costs of managing an account.
Understand the investment you are buying.
Examine individual share ownership, index replication, account minimums, custody and trading arrangements. Assess how security exclusions and personal preferences affect diversification and tracking error. Connect the proposed portfolio with your liquidity needs, investment horizon and capacity to tolerate losses.
Calculate the full cost.
Follow advisory fees, platform charges, underlying fund expenses, bid-ask spreads and cash balances through worked examples. Examine the cost of transferring appreciated shares and calculate the additional benefits required to cover recurring charges. Compare after-tax outcomes using consistent assumptions about funding, withdrawals and eventual disposal.
Evaluate the tax-loss harvesting promise.
Understand how realised losses interact with taxable gains, US wash-sale rules, cost basis and future liabilities. Examine transactions across household accounts and assess how contributions, withdrawals and portfolio history affect harvesting opportunities. Test provider claims under rising markets, broad declines, uneven share returns and periods with limited usable losses.
Make a documented purchase decision.
Compare providers through evidence concerning their services, disclosures, trading controls and reporting. Examine contracts, discretionary authority and exit terms before funding. Set benchmarks for costs, taxes and investment returns, then identify the conditions supporting a decision to proceed, postpone or decline.
Three investor cases make the analysis concrete: investing new cash, transferring appreciated shares and reducing a concentrated holding. Each case follows a different starting position and examines the decisions required to reach an appropriate portfolio. The examples connect tax calculations with investment exposure, available capital and realistic alternatives.
Readers evaluating a proposal will learn how to distinguish gross harvested losses from incremental tax benefits, account for an ETF alternative's harvesting opportunities and assess the effect of lower replacement cost basis. The discussion also examines the source of tax payments, the treatment of external cash balances and the records required to monitor results over time.
A dedicated assessment of provider claims examines simulations, return scenarios and the assumptions supporting projected tax savings. Practical contract analysis addresses restrictions, fee calculations, delegation, amendments and termination. Ongoing monitoring connects the original proposal with actual charges, realised transactions and portfolio performance.
Written for investors considering a separately managed account, owners of appreciated securities and readers seeking a structured approach to tax-aware investing, the book also supports informed discussions with financial advisers. Its primary tax framework concerns ordinary US taxable investment accounts, with hypothetical examples explaining the arithmetic and boundaries of each comparison.
This item is Non-Returnable
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9798165216688
- ISBN-10: 9798165216688
- Publisher: Independently Published
- Publish Date: October 2026
- Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.48 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.69 pounds
- Page Count: 230
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