Oil demand isn’t diminishing anytime soon, and while Russian Oil companies may suffer from sanctions and political pressure other oil companies are in a position to benefit. Goldman upgraded three oil companies that could capitalize. The first is Diamondback Energy from Texas; they have strong production and great revenues/earnings. Next up was Ovintiv which moved from Canada to the US two years ago but also has strong revenues and a half dozen consecutive quarterly gains in earnings. Rounding out the bunch is Hess which is a hydrocarbon extraction company which will benefit from the elevated prices in its shale search.

Finsum: These options look promising, remember fringe producers really benefit the most on the margins from elevated prices.

The longer equity portfolios experience growth over time the fewer the opportunities there are to realize the losses and take advantage. Actually quant fund AQR called these appreciated portfolio’s a ‘liability’ for tax purposes. One interesting thing they find is that tax preferred passive equity and direct indexing can develop unrealized gains rapidly. It takes only 3 years for direct indexing to have unrealized gains hit 50% of the portfolio value and 5 years for a tax preferred passive strategy. AQR offers an alternative approach, ‘enhanced indexing’ which is a tax-loss strategy they developed that can help investors. If a direct-indexing strategy already has large unrealized gains it is hard to catch up, but the enhanced indexing strategy can still generate losses for tax purposes. Enhanced indexing is the preferred option when a portfolio is already heavily appreciated.

Finsum: Direct indexing and enhanced indexing are both novel strategies in maintaining an ETF like strategy while taking advantage of tax-loss harvesting.

Legal experts are predicting there could be an expansion coming to the DOL fiduciary. Partners at Faegre Drinker are expecting a proposal in the next quarter or two which would label one-time advisors involved in retirement rollover or IRA assets to be labeled fiduciaries. One time advice-givers particularly those trying to establish a relationship would now be labeled as fiduciary advice. Reporters reached out to the Department of Labor but they did not respond to a request for a comment about the change. However, legal federations are expected to challenge the further expansion of the DOL fiduciary classification.

Finsum: This would be a major change to the DOL Fiduciary rule and could really impact advisors trying to gain clients.

There is nothing like an international conflict to generate a flight to safe assets, and as much pressure as treasury bond prices have taken in the last year, they are still the world’s premiere safe asset. Inflows post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have lowered Treasury yields and raised bond prices. Additionally it appears that markets are either dubious of the Fed’s rate hikes or just don’t think it will take as many to get the jobs done. Regardless, many bond ETFs, particularly around treasuries have benefited such as the iShares 7-10 Year Treasury Bond ETF and the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF which were up 2.0% and 2.6% respectively in the last week.

Finsum: Treasuries are still the global safe asset and they are still in short supply given the abnormally low levels of U.S. interest rates.

The 2019 Secure Act was THE critical piece of legislation for annuities in the 21st century, but that could change with the upcoming LIFE Act which is working its way to voting. Where the secure act made legal production of annuities easier and allowed them to be a part of retirement plans, the LIFE Act will allow annuities to be a 50% asset allocation by default from employers. Currently, the LIFE Act has strong bipartisan and posts a strong potential of passing, this would allow investors to double their baseline investment in annuities where it was previously capped at 25%.

Finsum: The ultra low rate environment has many investors more interested in turning to annuities for income than almost any other time before.