We’ve got just two more trading sessions left in 2021. And then it’s on to 2022.
Which means you should have wrapped up–or making any last minute sells–to harvest tax losses from 2021 in the next day or so.
Of course, being the tax-savvy investor that you are, you have postponed taking profits on big winners in 2021 until 2022. (I’ll have an update on January profit-taking in the week after New Years.)
Selling a profitable position in the first days of January 2022 rather than the last days of December 2021 let’s you put off paying any tax on those gains until you file your 2022 taxes in 2023. And that gives you extra time–a whole year–to realize any tax losses that you can use on that 2022 return.
I’m making two last sells out of my online portfolios today, Itau Unibanco (ITUB) and Cemex (CX). Both stocks are founding members of my long-term 50 Stocks Portfolio. Itau nibanco is down 56.45% from my initial December 30, 2008 pick and Cemex is down 1.59% since my December 30, 2008 pick as the 3:15 p.m. on December 30.
I think next year is likely to be another tough one for emerging markets as their economies struggle with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and, simultaneously, with a stronger dollar (in the first half of 2022 anyway) as a result of higher interest rates from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
I’m not looking for a quick turnaround in the domestic Brazilian economy. In November the inflation rate hit an annualized 10.7% and the consensus forecast for next year is that the economy will grow by just 0.5%.
Mexico, like Brazil, has been ravaged by the pandemic. GDP growth is likely to fall to around 3% in 2022 from 5.8% in 2021 (on the recovery from a terrible 2020). Inflation ran at a 7.37% annual rate in November. On a company specific level, I think Cemex, like all global cement makers, faces huge challenges and increases in capital spending as the industry, one of the world’s biggest sources of global warming gases, struggles to reinvent its basis production processes.
In other words, I’m not selling these two stocks just for tax reasons.
