Nine Wealth Strategies That Matter More Than Ever

Not one of them is new. What changed is the market they now have to work in.

Liquidity planning. Sequence of returns risk. Tax loss harvesting. Alternatives. International diversification. Concentration. Commodities. Roth conversions. Estate and charitable planning.

None of these ideas is new. Most have been standard vocabulary in wealth management for decades. So why does a season finale of Quarter Over Quarter spend an hour bringing them back together?

Because the environment they operate in has shifted underneath them. The ten largest companies in the S&P 500 now account for roughly 40.8% of the index — a concentration level well above the 26.6% peak reached during the technology bubble, according to J.P. Morgan Asset Management research published in May 2026. [1] The federal estate and gift tax exemption reset to $15 million per person on January 1, 2026. [2] A new floor now governs when charitable gifts become deductible at all. [3] The strategies did not change. The math around them did.

That is the argument Tom Moran and Don Drury make across this episode: in a market defined by narrow leadership and a rewritten tax code, the disciplines that look ordinary on paper are doing more work than they have in years. Below is the framework, the data behind it, and where each piece fits.

1. Liquidity is a decision-making tool, not a drag on returns

The most common objection to holding cash is opportunity cost. The counterargument in this episode is that liquidity is not measured in yield — it is measured in optionality.

The reason is sequence of returns risk. A portfolio in the distribution phase is permanently impaired by early losses in a way an accumulating portfolio is not, because withdrawals during a decline force the sale of more shares to raise the same dollar amount, leaving fewer shares to participate in the eventual recovery. Fidelity has illustrated the effect with two hypothetical retirees who each start with $1 million, withdraw $50,000 annually, and earn the same 6.8% average annual return over 30 years: the one who absorbs steep losses early runs out of money by year 27, while the one who receives favorable early returns finishes above $3 million. [4]

Same average return. Different order. Vastly different outcome. A liquidity reserve does not improve the average — it reduces the odds that a bad sequence forces a sale at the worst possible moment. Related reading: How to Build a Long-Term Wealth Plan and our retirement planning services.

2. The index is less diversified than it looks

Concentration is the thread running through several of the nine strategies, because it quietly changes what a “diversified” portfolio actually owns.

J.P. Morgan’s May 2026 analysis found the top ten S&P 500 names trading at roughly 26 times earnings — about 25% above their long-term average — while representing 40.8% of index weight. [1] The firm also notes a subtler problem: overlap. Three of the top ten appear in both the Russell 1000 Value and Russell 1000 Growth indices, meaning an investor who deliberately splits an allocation across styles can end up with materially more exposure to the same handful of companies than intended. [1]

This is the question Tom and Don examined in depth in Episode 024: Why High Net Worth Investors Look Beyond ETFs, and it is why disciplined rebalancing matters more when leadership narrows. Concentration is not inherently a problem. Unmeasured concentration is.

3. Diversification means owning things that behave differently

International: the gap has narrowed

Home bias has been an expensive habit to break, largely because it was rewarded for over a decade. That advantage has been less consistent recently. Over the twelve months through early March 2026, the iShares Core MSCI EAFE ETF returned 22.88% versus 17.69% for the S&P 500 — though over the trailing five years the same fund still lagged, returning 52.08% against 75.69%. [5]

Both numbers matter. The point is not that international investing has become the better trade; it is that a single market’s dominance is not a permanent condition, and MSCI research has documented unusually wide valuation spreads between value and growth across regions. [6] Diversification is a response to uncertainty about which regime comes next, not a prediction about it.

Alternatives: what the institutions actually hold

The 2025 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments surveyed 657 institutions managing $944.3 billion. Alternative investments accounted for 54.5% of all assets — versus 31.5% in public equities and 11% in fixed income. Private equity carried the single largest average allocation at 16.8%, followed by marketable alternatives at 15.4%. [7] The surveyed endowments returned an average 10.9% in fiscal 2025 and 7.7% annualized over ten years. [8]

Worth noting for balance: the same study observed that endowments with heavier public equity allocations have outperformed those weighted toward alternatives in recent years. [7] Alternatives are not a shortcut to higher returns. They are a different risk-and-liquidity profile, appropriate for some investors and unsuitable for others. See our investment strategies and asset management approach.

Commodities: a reserve-asset story, not a trade

The commodities discussion in this episode is framed less around price momentum and more around who is buying and why. The World Gold Council reported roughly 863 tonnes of central bank gold purchases in 2025, against a pre-2022 annual average of 400 to 500 tonnes. [9] State Street’s July 2026 Gold Monitor cites a European Central Bank estimate that gold reached 27% of global official reserves at the end of 2025, surpassing U.S. Treasuries at 22% for the first time. [10]

Sovereign reserve managers are not making a tactical call. They are diversifying the composition of reserves. That is a different signal than a price chart.

4. Tax efficiency is a year-round discipline, not a December exercise

Tax loss harvesting is widely understood as a fourth-quarter cleanup task. The research suggests most of the value is lost that way.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management compared daily versus monthly loss-harvesting cadence and found the daily approach delivered approximately 30 basis points of additional annualized tax alpha on average. [11] J.P. Morgan Private Bank’s analysis further found the benefit is strongly front-loaded: potential tax savings typically exceed 1% annualized in a portfolio’s early years before tapering below 0.5% by years eight through ten, with nearly 80% of cumulative tax savings realized in the first five years. [12]

Two practical implications follow. First, harvesting opportunities appear when markets fall — which is precisely when most investors are least inclined to look. Second, because the benefit decays, an account’s early years deserve the most attention, not the least. Harvested losses offset realized gains, with up to $3,000 of excess loss deductible against ordinary income annually and the remainder carried forward indefinitely. [13] Explore our strategic tax planning services.

5. The 2026 rulebook rewrote estate and charitable planning

This is where the episode is most explicitly current, because the ground moved on January 1.

Estate and gift

• The lifetime federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax exemption is $15 million per individual — $30 million for a married couple — effective January 1, 2026, with no scheduled expiration and future inflation indexing. [2]
• The top marginal transfer tax rate remains 40%, and the annual gift tax exclusion holds at $19,000 per recipient ($38,000 for a married couple). [14]
• Practical consequence: formula clauses drafted under prior exemption levels may no longer distribute as intended. Existing documents warrant a read-through against the new numbers. [2]

Charitable giving

• Itemizers now face a 5% of AGI floor — only contributions above that threshold are deductible. At $500,000 of AGI, the first $2,500 of giving produces no deduction. [3]
• Filers in the top bracket face a new 35% cap on the value of itemized deductions, including charitable gifts, which raises the after-tax cost of giving relative to prior rules. [3]
• The 60%-of-AGI limit for cash gifts to public charities was made permanent, and donations of long-term appreciated securities retain their treatment. [3]
• Bunching — concentrating several years of intended giving into a single tax year — becomes a more meaningful lever, because it clears the floor by a wider margin. [3]

Larger exemptions reduce federal estate tax exposure for many families, but they do not remove the planning question — they relocate it toward income tax efficiency, basis management, and the timing of lifetime gifts. That is also the context in which Roth conversions get a second look: converting during a lower-income year moves future growth into a tax-free vehicle and reduces the pre-tax balance that heirs would otherwise inherit alongside a compressed distribution window. See our estate planning and charitable giving capabilities.

What actually connects the nine

Read individually, these are nine tactics. Read together, they are one argument: the variables an investor cannot control — index composition, tax legislation, the order in which returns arrive — are exactly the variables that determine how much the controllable decisions are worth.

Liquidity is only valuable if it exists before the downturn. Loss harvesting only works if someone is watching during the decline. Diversification only helps if it was built before leadership rotated. Estate documents only function if they were reviewed after the law changed. Every one of these strategies is preparation, and preparation has a deadline that is never announced in advance.

For the current market backdrop, see Tom Moran’s July 2026 commentary, “Broader, and Cooler.”

Listen to the full conversation

Tom Moran and Don Drury walk through all nine strategies — including the portions on Roth conversion sequencing and charitable vehicle selection not covered here — in the season finale of Quarter Over Quarter.

• Watch on YouTube: @MoranWealth
• Listen on Apple Podcasts: Quarter Over Quarter
• Browse more planning tools and calculators in our resource library

If any of these nine strategies raises a question about your own plan, schedule a complimentary consultation with a Moran Wealth Management® advisor.