Basis Risk

  

Let's say an investor engages in a hedging strategy (investing in different securities with negative correlations to offset, or "hedge" the risk of price or value fluctuations in one of the securities you've invested in). Their basis risk is the possibility that security "b" (bought to hedge the decrease in value of security "a") will not experience an increase in value if security "a" depreciates.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is Cost Basis?10 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop what is cost basis or set another

00:07

way What is the basis for tax purposes of your

00:11

cost in this stock or this investment Like you bought

00:15

a stock a twelve bucks chair and now it's a

00:17

thirty and you go to sell it So really why

00:21

does all this matter One word yet our beals above

00:24

word rhymes with smacks is so when a company or

00:27

an individual cells something while there are three outcomes the

00:31

asset either made money lost money or broke even if

00:35

it broke even there's Nothing to do no tax to

00:37

pay no paper to be filed ever been pointing out

00:40

the cost bases was in fact the net sales price

00:43

for the whatever but for gains Well where there are

00:46

a lot of taxes to pay the cost basis matters

00:49

a lot Think about a share of coca cola your

00:52

grandpappy bought in nineteen eighty for about a dollar a

00:54

share It's trading at fifty one dollars a share now

00:58

so happy jed has a fifty dollars a share gain

01:01

that he would realize meaning get taxed on if he

01:05

sold that coke stock and turned it into cash will

01:08

His cost basis was a dollar a share and his

01:11

gain is taxable Gain was fifty bucks a share and

01:16

at a long term tax rate of about forty percent

01:19

in a blue state that would be twenty dollars in

01:22

tax on that fifty dollars of gain and ouch Yeah

01:26

After that sale for fifty one dollars a share of

01:29

coke he'd be left with only thirty one bucks in

01:32

his pocket Enormous tax Painful so painful in fact that

01:36

his gain is so much with his cost basis so

01:39

low Well that pappy jet is highly incentivized to never

01:43

sell that share of coke at least not unless he

01:46

absolutely has to In the math here is painful At

01:49

fifty one bucks a share coke will earn three bucks

01:51

a share this year and three fifty next So if

01:54

he nets thirty one dollars a share in his pocket

01:56

after the sale well then he's essentially selling coke polo

02:00

one of the premier companies in the world at thirty

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one over three fifty or just about nine times forward

02:07

earnings which is just a crazy low cheap price for

02:11

one of america's premier growth companies right And yes it

02:15

works the other way around too And no not like

02:18

that Had he bought shares of yahoo right its peak

02:21

at two hundred bucks a share and then held it

02:23

a decade so that it was down teo little forty

02:26

dollars a share Amongst that being ali baba he could

02:29

realize attacks lost of one hundred sixty dollars a share

02:33

by selling it And that loss and a forty percent

02:36

tax rate marginal tax rate kind of tax rate world

02:39

is actually worth a lot in offsetting tax gains or

02:43

tax savings of point four times one sixty or sixty

02:48

four dollars a share in tax savings Like you khun

02:52

shelter gains by realizing losses Welcome to america So yeah

02:56

there's a perverse relationship with pressure toehold versus pressure to

03:00

sell when stocks do really well it's painful to sell

03:04

them because taxes take such a huge bite out of

03:06

your net gains and the opposite is true as well

03:09

When you lose money on a stock well you're highly

03:12

incentivized to sell that loser shelter gains on your winners

03:16

and we'll just move the hell on Want to see

03:18

something really freaky Right Go into the bathroom Turn off

03:21

The lights and say the word tax me uncle sam

03:24

Three times Just a word of warning though We want

03:27

to keep a firm grip on your wallet If you 00:03:28.835 --> [endTime] do that there

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