Watching stocks drop deeper into a bear market may have investors itching to make some drastic moves. On Tuesday, the S & P 500 hit a fresh low for the year, while the 10-year Treasury yield rose within striking distance of the key 4% level. Yet experts warn against bailing out altogether from the stock market. Instead, it may be a good time to make adjustments to your portfolio or take some tax losses. “It feels like there’s nowhere to hide, and it’s a tough one,” said certified financial planner Blair duQuesnay, an investment advisor at Ritholtz Wealth Management. For those with a long enough time horizon of five or 10 years or more, the sell-off could be an opportunity to buy the right stocks at a discount. That may mean rebalancing your portfolio — that is, adjusting it so that your asset classes are properly aligned with your financial plan, said duQuesnay, a member of the CNBC Financial Advisor Council. With the downturn now going on for over nine months, you have to put in the work to earn returns, she said. “The work sometimes is the hard part of doing nothing when it feels so wrong to do nothing,” duQuesnay said. “But that is how we end up earning good returns in the market over the long term.” Sell strategically Now could be a good time to take some losses and cut your tax bill. Tax loss harvesting is when you sell off losing positions in your taxable brokerage account and use them to offset capital gains realized elsewhere in your portfolio. To the extent losses exceed gains, you can offset ordinary income by up to $3,000 a year . The key is to reinvest that money instead of letting it sit in cash. “It doesn’t necessarily mean you are going into who you think is a better investment, but maybe something different. Just different enough to get the benefit of a tax loss and still be invested,” said Mitchell Goldberg, president of ClientFirst Strategy. For instance, you can sell a tech stock at a loss and get into a Nasdaq 100 ETF to stay invested in the sector, he said. Marguerita Cheng, CFP and CEO of Blue Ocean Global Wealth, recently employed the tactic for a couple of her clients and deployed the proceeds into tax-advantaged accounts. For instance, one client reinvested the proceeds into a Roth IRA , an account that grows free of taxes and that is eligible for tax-free qualified distributions in retirement. “It’s important to be strategic,” she said. “It is not just lemonade being made out of lemons. This is lemon souffle.” Buy intelligently Those who are not nearing retirement should keep investing, Goldberg said. “Keep dollar-cost averaging into your retirement plan. Reinvest dividends and interest and hang on for the ride,” he said. “A market like this historically is when the big money is made.” Cathy Curtis, founder and chief executive officer of Curtis Financial Planning, held onto more cash than usual over the past year. She’s now starting to slowly deploy it into the market until she reaches her clients’ target asset allocations. “Investors should know that it is super hard to time the market,” she said. “Money allocated to stocks now may not provide gains right away as the market could continue to go down. So depending on how a person can tolerate that risk will depend on what they do right now.” For those looking to buy stocks, look at consumer staples, which are going to be relatively stable when the market is down over 20%, said Delano Saporu, CEO of financial planning and portfolio management firm New Street Advisors Group. That means stocks such as Walmart and Coca-Cola , he said. Look for names that can control margins and have free cash flow. Dividend yields are also great to have right now, he said. Don’t dump your growth companies. “I wouldn’t panic sell any of the solid growth companies … that will rebound as the economy rebounds,” Saporu said. Finding shelter For those worried about risk, stability can be found in the Treasury market. You might consider putting some of your holdings in Treasury bills, or T-bills, Treasury notes or Series I savings bonds. With the yield curve inverted, short-term notes now have higher yields than longer-term ones. These short-term bonds are also now more compelling considering stocks’ performance this year. Investors can purchase Series I savings bonds with an initial interest rate of 9.62% through October. You can buy Treasurys directly from the U.S. government through its website, TreasuryDirect.gov or through a brokerage firm. If you hold the bond to maturity, you are not affected by market risk. You’ll also get paid interest twice a year. You can also get exposure to the Treasury market without owning the actual securities, through a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund. You’ll get diversification, but funds could suffer price dislocation in a year like this one and you’ll have the prospect of losses. Income payments can also fluctuate, since you have different bonds in the fund.
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