A three week public consultation on the masterplan in Sheffield is now under way

Plans to transform the former Ski Village site in Sheffield into a large leisure and outdoor adventure destination have been revealed. A three-week public consultation is now under way, with developers keen to get input from residents and other stakeholders on the far-reaching plans.

The scheme is being driven forward by Skyline Enterprises, the New Zealand-based leader in adventure tourism and visitor experiences. A planning application for the development is expected to be submitted towards the end of the year and, subject to approval, it would be delivered in multiple phases.

The first phase of the development would see the creation of Skyline’s downhill karting, a scenic chairlift, an indoor educational attraction, cafe and terrace overlooking Sheffield, a large free-to-use outdoor plaza and family playground, and a customer car park.

Later phases are planned including a zipline attraction and a surf wave experience. Meanwhile, longer-term ambitions include reintroducing dry ski slopes to Parkwood Springs.

Existing walking and mountain bike trails would be retained as part of the masterplan, ensuring enhanced public access remains throughout the site.

A public consultation on the proposals runs until Sunday, September 20, giving residents, businesses and local stakeholders the chance to review the proposals and share feedback.

Like this story? For more news from the commercial property scene around the regions, visit our dedicated section here for the latest news and analysis within the sector.

Two drop-in events have also been organised, where people can meet members of the Skyline project team and discuss the proposals, next Wednesday and Thursday.

Geoff McDonald, chief executive officer of Skyline Enterprises, said: “We’re excited to share our latest proposals with the city and want to hear from local people, businesses and community groups about our plans and understand what matters most to them.

“We see Sheffield as a perfect partner and believe the Parkwood Springs project has the potential to become one of the UK’s most distinctive outdoor leisure destinations, helping to further enhance Sheffield’s visitor offer, support the local economy and create new jobs.”

The proposals come at a time of wider investment by Sheffield City Council in the area, including a £19m Government Levelling Up Fund programme that will deliver a new access road, junction improvements and wider infrastructure upgrades.

Skyline has appointed a number of businesses as part of their plans, including leisure development specialists Omisa Ltd as project management partners, Willis Hazell Engineers, Patersons (engineering) and Griffith Evans (MEP). Other Sheffield-based firms will also play key roles, including architects Hadfield Cawkwell Davidson and Ares, environmental specialists Weddles, planning consultancy Urbana and communications firm Counter Context.

ROSEMONT, ILL. — Haribo is a 106-year-old cornerstone of the confection industry and the creator of several iconic gummy candies, including its flagship Goldbears, along with Twin Snakes and Peaches.

While competition is fierce among the growing list of competitors vying for gummy dollars, Haribo is currently the No. 1 gummy candy brand by volume in the United States, according to data from NIQ over the 52-week period ended Aug. 8. The company also holds US household penetration of nearly 41% today.  

Haribo was founded in 1920 in Bonn, Germany, by Hans Riegel, who came up with Haribo by combining his name and the company’s origin city: HAns RIegel BOnn. Today, Haribo’s global headquarters is in Grafschaft, Germany, and the company remains a family-owned, private business.

While Haribo is truly a global brand — currently sold in nearly 200 countries — in recent years, the company has dedicated significant resources to expand its share of the US market. In 2023, Haribo opened a manufacturing facility in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., where today, 80% of all Haribo candy sold in the United States is made. It was the largest investment in global manufacturing in Haribo’s history.

More recently, the US segment of Haribo — known as Haribo of America, Inc. — named Jon Hughes the president and CEO of Haribo of America in July. It’s a newly created position that Hughes said is an important milestone for the company. Hughes was Haribo’s UK and Ireland managing director prior to his new role.  

“The (US) business has gone through a fantastic period, a decade-long growth trajectory,” Hughes said, speaking to Food Business News. “But we’re just now starting to enter a new phase. I think there’s an opportunity now as we think about how we want to drive disciplined growth in the years ahead. The brand and marketing, sales, operations, supply chain, innovation, customer partnerships, really trying to align the whole business around sustainable long-term growth. I think the timing for my role is really around that.”

“One of the big challenges (in the United States) is just how large and complex and competitive the market is here,” said John Hughes, chief executive officer of Haribo of America.

| Photo: Haribo of America

Market challenges

In the United States today, there are several disruptive elements facing not just Haribo, but the candy industry as a whole. These include the impact of the make America healthy again (MAHA) movement, which demonizes sugar and pushes for the removal of artificial colors — backed by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — and the continued rise of GLP-1 weight-loss medication, which reduces the appetites of those taking the drug.

“I think consumers still want choice,” Hughes said. “They’re still looking for those moments of fun, those things that taste great as well, and can be a little treat at any point in the day. I think the (confectionery) category will be relatively resilient. I think we play a special role within that because of our link to creating those moments of unconcerned consumption, unconcerned moments of happiness.

“On the colors and flavors point more broadly, I think the most important thing is that the FDA has issued guidance, we’ll continue to follow that guidance and we’ll adapt as needed. We offer a variety of different treats in the US made with fruit and vegetable juices for color already. We have a lot of experience on this topic around the world and from Europe as well. So, we’re looking forward to supporting whatever the consumer wants, and I’m pretty confident that we’ll be able to meet those needs going forward.”

Hughes added that one of Haribo’s most successful packaging formats is mini-bags, so it is already well positioned to address GLP-1 consumers, reduced appetites and those seeking portion control.

Some of Haribo’s recent product innovations include Sour Sodas gummies and the new multi-flavored, multi-textured Balla Bites, which debuted in August.

| Photo: Haribo

Innovation and retail

Some of Haribo’s recent product innovations include Sour Sodas gummies and the new multi-flavored, multi-textured Balla Bites, which debuted in August.

 The company also has a history of collaborating with pop culture entities to create products that align with the ongoing trend of nostalgia in candy and snacks. For example, Haribo has a long-running, successful collaboration with the Smurfs, and more recently, the Harry Potter franchise, producing themed gummies shaped like Harry Potter characters, pets and props, including the latest, Draco Malfoy, debuting this year.

“We’re quite careful with the brands that we want to work with, because we want to make sure there’s a really great fit,” Hughes said. “That it actually delivers something meaningful for consumers rather than just badging stuff. We’re looking for fandom, nostalgia, discovery and joy, and when we find a collab that ticks those boxes for us, then we’re keen to work with it.”

Hughes added that the consumer is at the heart of Haribo’s product development strategy, particularly as the company grows in the US market.

“The focus for us is going to be on consumer-led innovation,” he said. “To try and get a deep understanding of the consumer and what their needs and wants are, and where the opportunities are within the category that we can really play in.”

One way to gain immediate feedback from consumers is through Haribo’s retail outlets. The company has 80 stores globally, and recently opened its first two US stores in August — one in Woodbury, NY, the other in Wrentham, Mass. — which carry US Haribo candy as well as some available only in Europe, giving customers a chance to sample a wide spectrum of Haribo’s offerings.

Haribo opened its first two retail stores in the United States in August, one in New York, the other in Massachusetts. The company operates 80 branded stores globally. 

| Photo: Elisif Brandon/Haribo of America

“It’s a great range of merchandise and a great pick-and-mix wall for people to come and build their own mixes and experience their fan favorites,” Hughes said.

Looking ahead, Hughes understands that growing the US market is not a simple cut-and-paste project based on the success of other Haribo initiatives abroad.

“One of the big challenges (in the United States) is just how large and complex and competitive the market is here,” he said. “I think the (Pleasant Prairie) factory is a big step forward for us. That really helps support long-term growth here in the US. It gives us shortened supply chains, makes us quicker to market, and helps us develop local innovation that’s really tailored to the market here.” 

Listen here or on the go via Apple Podcasts and Spotify

Raul Shah from DocShah Financial talks value investing in stocks like ServiceNow, UnitedHealth and Hims & Hers (2:20) Tax loss harvesting – when to use and when not to (8:15)

Transcript

Rena Sherbill: We are back with none other than Mr. Raul Shah from DocShah Financial. You know him as one of our very own in-house tax experts who has been helping us all as citizens, as investors, helping us navigate the tax world very astutely and very efficiently.

He is the founder, as I mentioned, of DocShah Financial, which is a value investing firm that’s focused on helping everyday investors and retirees maximize their portfolio growth while protecting all of our wealth from heavy taxation through advanced tax planning.

DocShah Financial has been around since 2023 and it’s generated a 43% annualized equity return for its clients. Raul is also an educator at Johns Hopkins University, where he teaches a tax planning course for that community. And I’m very excited to have Raul on again for our monthly chat.

Today we’re going to be talking tax loss harvesting, but I wanted to, because Raul has been on in the past talking his very successful investments, most noteworthy Hims & Hers Health (HIMS), but he’s got some other announcements and I think updates for us that I asked him to share with our investing community because I think it’s helpful to know where these stocks are at and what he’s thinking about it.

So, all of that, welcome, Raul, to another month at Investing Experts Podcast.

Raul Shah: Thank you for that warm intro as always. I think this is week four that we’ve been doing the tax planning series. And I still get so many emails from people that listen to the podcast and they love it. I have people that just reach out to say, I didn’t know XYZ before, and now I’m down the rabbit hole.

And that’s really the goal of this segment is just to help people educate themselves and learn for themselves. And and seeking alpha, I think, is the best community to do that.

And so I’m I’m excited to get into the tax planning stuff that we’ll talk about with tax loss harvesting, because there’s actually a lot of nuance with that strategy that I think a lot of investors aren’t necessarily aware of. But also happy to give an update just on the firm. As as you mentioned, you know, we’re a value investing firm. So when I work with clients, I I always try to put quality you know, in front of quantity. So I don’t go out and buy 20 stocks for clients. It

It never made sense to me. Why would you put money in your twentieth best idea? You know, why not your nineteenth? And you could apply that same logic, so on and and and so forth down the the chain effectively.

So we focus on quality, a few of the names that we own I’ve written articles about on Seeking Alpha like Hims and ServiceNow (NOW) and UnitedHealth Group (UNH), just fantastic businesses. And I’m happy to talk about them.

These of course are not recommendations. I don’t know anybody specifically listening in the audience and what your situation is. But I’m a fan of stocks and so I love talking about this stuff.

HIMS is our crown jewel. That’s a stock that I’ve owned personally since 2021. And it’s a stock that’s been in client accounts since inception. Every time I onboard a new client, Hims is usually the leading stock in their portfolio. And that’s just because their growth is tremendous.

I think their total addressable market is tremendous.

There are risks in that business. Anytime you navigate in the healthcare industry, it’s always very regulatory. Aalmost every other week it seems like there’s some some news on him saying, they’re breached from doing XYZ. so it’s it’s a you know, it’s never there’s never a dull day owning that stock.

But I think it’s a tremendous business with great unit economics, and I expect it’s gonna do very well for a long period of time.

ServiceNow is another fantastic company. I’m a huge fan of the CEO, Bill McDermott. I’ve read his book. And I just really admire the integrity that that he has. And of course, I’ve never met him personally, but you can get a good glimpse of people when you read their life story and and and where they come from, especially when it’s from humble beginnings.

I was buying that stock. I’m the only portfolio manager at DocShah Financial, so I oversee all the accounts. I was placing that stock and client accounts at $98, $95 and even further down. And now we’re at almost $150 in six weeks. So, I always tell people price does not determine value, right?

We’ve had conversations about this in the past. And it’s a bit hypocritical for me to come on air and say, because the price is going up, I’m justified or I’m I’m right. I’m looking at the business valuations and I’m looking at the earnings continuing to go up.

I’m looking at the unit economics of all these businesses continuing to improve, especially with UnitedHealth Group. They’ve come a long way in six months. And that’s why the the stock prices have risen and why I expect them to continue to rise.

But that’s the name of the game, value investing. That’s why I always tell people price and value don’t equal each other. If you chase price, you’ll lose that game a hundred percent of the time. If you chase value, you’ll win not a hundred percent of the time, but you’ll get pretty dang close.

Rena Sherbill: Not to get too far off the tax topic, but just to make a point as a value investor, what would you say are the most salient metrics you would encourage investors to look at without doing the deepest dive possible?

Raul Shah: Sure. I always look for 5 things right off the bat. I can analyze pretty much any company if it’s worth looking into more within 60 seconds at this point. revenue.

You have to see revenue going up every year. You know, in economics, revenue is really just a proxy for demand. And so if you’re a company and your revenue is falling, that means less people want your products. That’s not a good investment.

That’s not a good company to own. So that’s number one. You want to see revenue going up because you want to see more people buying services or products. It doesn’t matter how you chop it up, you could be selling more units at a cheaper price or fewer units at a higher price.

But what you want is the total demand or the total revenue to be going up. You also want profits to be going up. You want earnings per share to be go going up. Technically there are great investments that don’t have earnings per share today.

There’s companies like HIMS or Palantir (PLTR) or a lot of these other great companies that are expected to produce ample earnings in the future. So it’s not a hard and set rule, but you either have to have some prospect of realizing earnings relatively quickly, as in within the next five years, or they already have earnings and they’re going up every year. Otherwise, you’re just buying a pipe dream.

If you’re buying a company and their earnings aren’t expected to go up until like 20 years into the future. I mean, you gotta be kidding me there’s a million other stocks out there, you’re just losing an opportunity cost. So you want good solid earnings in your business. And then the balance sheet.

There’s only two things that matter: you look at the cash, you look at the long-term debt. Companies are like people. So if you buy a company that has a lot of cash and no debt, the insolvency risk is, I mean correct me if I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen a lot of companies go bankrupt when they haven’t borrowed any money. That would be a neat party trick for somebody to pull off.

So you want protection, you want margin of safety when you’re buying businesses. And you also want cash flow from operations to be going up. That’s just the cash you make from the stuff that you sell. And if you only bought businesses that had those characteristics, companies that the revenue is going up, the earnings are going up, the cash flows are going up, there’s a ton of cash on the balance sheet, and there’s no debt.

Not only would you buy far fewer businesses in life, but you’d have much better results doing a tenth of the work.

It’s not easy to manage a portfolio of 30 stocks when you have a full-time job. That’s a full-time job in and of itself. And the whole idea always struck me as ludicrous. Why put money in my 30th best idea? The only reason that I would ever do that is if I was just trying to have an insurance policy against my own laziness.

If I’m not doing enough due diligence on my companies that I feel the need to just keep adding more so that if some go down, some go up and it balances out, that’s not really an investment strategy.

So those are the things I would say if you’re a true value investor, and the benefits are tremendous. You’ll likely make far more money than you ever thought was possible, owning fewer businesses, doing less work, and getting better sleep.

Purchase price is very important when you buy stocks. You can’t ever pay more than what something is worth because the the more in excess you pay,

For something relative to what it’s worth, the more risk you take. And believe me, you’re not gonna sleep well at night if you take on a lot of risk in investing.

Rena Sherbill: Speaking of not wanting to take on a lot of risk, how may tax loss harvesting help us kind of navigate those choppy waters of profitability?

Raul Shah: Sure, yeah. So tax loss harvesting, right? I always tell people it’s very simple to understand, it’s a little bit more complicated to know when to use it.

So let’s define it, right? Tax loss harvesting is just recognizing a loss in order to specifically reduce your taxes owed in a particular year. So let’s take a very basic example here.

Let’s say that you have five and by the way, we’re gonna ignore state taxes and all these other we’re just gonna focus on kind of the federal tax, you know, capital gains tax, to just to make the example easy. Okay, let’s say that you have no gains okay in your portfolio, okay. Tough year, and you’ve got 10,000 in a short term capital loss. Okay, so you bought a stock in July, you lost 10K in it, and you know, see we’re at the end of the year. If you sell that, you actually get a tax benefit.

Because you can lock in that loss and ultimately in this example, if you had no gains, you would be able to deduct up to $3,000 from your income, right? From your salary. The benefits are not tremendous.

It’s not like you’re gonna save hundreds of thousands of dollars in lifetime taxes like you could with Roth conversions, but it’s compounding sort of in reverse. It’s the little bit that you save every year that could add up over a long period of time to really good tax benefits.

Now, like I said, there’s a lot of nuance and we’ll dive into that in just a second. But at the end of the day, tax loss harvesting is purposefully recognizing a loss, clicking the sell button to lock in a loss.

Because until you do that, it’s just an unrealized loss, right? It’s just a paper loss. It’s not a real loss. So you can’t do tax loss harvesting until you actually sell it and you recognize that loss. And, you’re doing it with the intent to save X amount on taxes.

If I take it kind of a step further, what a lot of people will do is, they will buy a stock and they will sell it specifically to harvest losses if it goes down.

And I tell people tax loss harvesting is not the main goal. Okay, the main goal is making money, right?

There’s a saying we have in in wealth management, which is don’t let the tax tail wag the dog. That’s just a kind of cheeky way of saying don’t make saving and taxes the number one priority versus making money.

It’s only if you happen to have made a bad investment or the market goes down that you might want to consider tax loss harvesting. You don’t want to just do it for the tax benefits.

One of the common mistakes people will do with tax loss harvesting is let’s say that the market goes down and they decide that they want to own the S&P 500 and they want to sell that that ETF to recognize losses, but they don’t recognize that there’s an opportunity cost to that because there’s essentially the IRS has what’s what’s called a wash sale rule.

So if you’re going to sell a stock at a loss, you can recognize that gain and reduce your taxable income with it or offset your capital gains tax.

And we’ll use examples in just a second with actual numbers. But there’s a window of 30 days before and 30 days after where you cannot have owned that identical security.

And that’s done to prevent gaming the system. So, for example, if I were to buy a stock and it falls and I have a $10,000 loss in it, and then I just sell it, recognize a loss, and then just buy it right back 10 seconds later. Well, I mean, you could see how that’d be problem, right? Every time, every day the market goes down, you would just do this over and over and over again.

You would remain a hundred percent invested throughout every day of the year, but you would have racked up thousands of dollars in losses that you would be depreciating or that you would be netting versus your capital gain.

So that’s why the wash sale rule exists, is to prevent that from happening. We’ll talk about one really big nuance with that a little bit later. But again, when you do that if you tax loss harvest and you save X amount in tax dollars, you also have to factor in that it keeps you uninvested for up to those 60 days.

And so you’re sitting out of the market during that timeline. And what if the market happens to go up a lot during the time that you have to sit out, like after you sell it? If the market goes up 10% and you don’t save 10% in taxes, well then you actually lost money, right? So it’s not a perfect science.

It takes a lot of planning and it’s really only valuable to do it in scenarios where the benefit to you is obvious. sort of like investing, right? When I’m buying stocks for clients, I’m not trying to buy stocks that I think if everything goes right, the company is gonna the stock price will go up. I’m trying to buy stocks that if everything goes wrong, the stock is still underpriced.

And so you have to try to make it really obvious and that’s where these strategies come into play. So I will stop here and and see if that makes sense and open up the door for any other questions or or comments.

Rena Sherbill: Well, I was gonna ask, it may it may make sense for you to continue on in your explanation, but I was going to ask if there’s a real world example that you can think of of a tax loss harvesting that you’re happy with that feels like a good example, and one where you feel like was maybe too preemptive or something of that nature.

Raul Shah: Sure. That’s a great question. And I’m gonna come out as a little bit hypocritical here.

When I look at my own personal brokerage account, I don’t really buy index funds or ETFs. I mean I buy individual stocks and individual stocks is very difficult to tax loss harvest because the idea, remember, is that if you happen to have a loss, you can lock it in and then you can rebuy maybe a substantial a similar but not substantially identical security as a placeholder. So you aren’t sitting out of the market, you’re still invested, but to get to recognize that loss.

The problem when you own individual stocks is how do you find us an 80% replica of what you own, right? People will say, if I own Coca-Cola and it’s at a loss, I could sell it and then maybe buy Pepsi. But the problem with that is that they are still two different companies, right? Just because they both sell beverages doesn’t make them the same company.

It’s much more valuable when you own like an ETF. Because if you were to own, let’s say, I’m just using this as examples. Like if you were to own Vanguard’s (VOO), which is the S&P 500, and you sold it to lock in a loss because the market’s down, but you have to stay invested. So you buy back maybe the Russell 1000, right? Those indices are different, but you’re staying invested and they’re close enough that if you know the S&P is going up,

The Russell 1000 is probably going up too. So you’re still capturing all the upside, but you’re locking in that downside loss. You just can’t do that as easily with individual stocks.

A lot of times people only tell half the story. They’ll sell you on the tax benefits, but you always have to remember that opportunity cost.

And that’s why doing it with individual stocks is sometimes not the best idea because you can’t really remain invested to something that’s an individual stock, something that’s similar to it but also different, if that makes sense.

And if we kind of use an example here, let’s just say we’re let’s go back to you know ETFs, like you own the S&P or something like that. Let’s say for the year you recognize $10,000 in short-term capital gains. And let’s say that you have 20,000 in short-term capital losses. The IRS uses what’s called a like-for-like matching system. So short-term capital losses offset short-term capital gains.

First. And if there’s excess remaining, then those short-term capital gains will offset us, then the short-term capital losses will offset long-term capital gains. And if there’s still an excess, then you can use up to $3,000 to offset your ordinary income. And if there’s still excess left, then it carries forward to the next year and indefinitely.

So if we run through an example, I have $10,000 in short-term capital gains and I’ve got $20,000 in short-term capital losses. So right off the bat, all my short-term capital gains, the tax is going to be wiped clear because I’ve got $2 in loss for every $1 in gain on a like-for-like basis. So after I net that out, I’ve still got $10,000 in short-term capital losses. So if I have, let’s say, a $5,000 capital gain.

That capital gain gets cleared out and I still have 5,000 in short term capital losses. And then I can take 3,000 of that, deduct that from my income. So if I made a hundred K for the year, now my taxable income’s only ninety seven K. And then I’ve got two thousand left that I can carry for it to the next year, which would offset any capital gains in that year on a like for like basis.

And if something’s left over, then it would apply to your ordinary income. So a lot of a big misconception people will get is that they think that you can only deduct $3,000 a year in tax loss harvesting.

And that’s not true. You can only deduct up to 3,000 on your income, but you also can offset your capital gains and the excess will just carry forward indefinitely. So if you have like a like a horrendous year, and you lose, I don’t know, a hundred, two hundred thousand dollars or something like that, you’re gonna use up all of those losses. You may not use them all up in in when one year. But you will use them up hopefully if you do things right over your lifetime.

But that’s one really big misconception that people have. And I don’t know Rena if you’ve heard that before, the three thousand dollar rule, but a lot of people will get that kind of confused.

Rena Sherbill: I feel like I’ve brought this up before, but when I was starting The Cannabis Investing Podcast, there was a lot of t discussion about tax loss harvesting at the end of those years with people’s portfolios. So yeah, I remember some highlights from that.

Any other caveats you would add to a chock-full caveat conversation?

Raul Shah: Yeah, absolutely.

One of the things that always trips people up is not necessarily the the wash rule, right? That thirty day window before and after where you can’t own the identical or essentially identical security because it will disallow your your wash or d disallow your loss. one thing that trips people up all the time is that applies to also dividends.

So people have DRIP programs set up, right? Dividend reinvestment programs where they’re just automatically reinvesting their dividends into the same security. And so what happens, you probably had this in your portfolio right before where you’ll buy a stock that has a dividend, you’ll sell the stock before the divid the next dividend is paid.

And then the dividend check comes in and you’re like, how do I own that stock again? It’s because it was automatically reinvested. And so that counts, that will trigger the wash sale role. So people will sell something, they locked in the loss, and then like a week later, they’ll have their dividend check deposit, but it’s reinvested in that security

Which counts as you buying back that security again. And then that disallows your loss. So you have to be very careful with that, because that trips people all the time. You gotta turn that that that feature off if you’re specifically trying to tax loss harvest.

The other thing that trips people up too is that tax loss harvesting only applies in brokerage accounts. Right? It doesn’t make sense. It wouldn’t apply in an IRA, Roth IRA, traditional IRA, 401k, because those are all either tax deferred or tax-free accounts. So there’s no such thing as tax loss harvesting in those accounts.

So what people think, they think that they’ll try to trick the system, which which you can’t do that by the way, and you should nor should you ever try, always follow the rules.

But what people will do is they will sell a stock in their brokerage or sell a ETF and they’ll lock in that loss, and then they think they’re slick and they they they go buy it and like in their Roth IRA.

It doesn’t matter what account that you that you ha are selling and buying from, if you rebuy the same security, period, you’re gonna disallow the loss.

So those are kind of the two really big nuances that if you do try to execute that, you really do need to be aware of. and then it’s just really just the mindset, it’s going in knowing that I’m not trying to lose money, right? I’m only going to tax loss harvest if there is some economic benefit to me that exceeds the opportunity cost of just remaining invested. So it’s not just like you do it automatically every year. You have to actually think through and run the numbers on when it’s appropriate, when when it really makes sense.

And then the last little nuance that I will leave everybody with is that when you tax loss harvest, you sell something in a loss, you lock in that loss, and then you rebuy something similar. What’s happened is that you’re likely buying something now at a much lower cost basis.

So again, yes, you recognize that tax saving from tax loss harvesting. But because you’re now taking those cash proceeds and buying something that’s similar but different at a much lower price, whenever the market recovers, your cost basis being lower means that your future tax bill is going to be higher. So you have to calculate that with your overall estimation of if you make out better or not by tax loss harvesting. So it’s not just like a one time cure.

So just to kind of quickly recap, right? So tax loss harvesting, essentially what we’re doing is we are locking in a loss to gain some kind of a tax benefit in our brokerage account while simultaneously trying to remain invested to capture the upside of the recovery of that stock or similar stock or ETF, whatever, while also making sure that we do not trigger the IRS wash sale rule, which can be triggered by dividends, it can be triggered by buying the same security in in your brokerage or a different account. And then ultimately we have to run the numbers to figure out if it’s advantageous.

It’s not a strategy that’s going to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes over your lifetime, like I said before. But it is something that if you do strategically, you can save a meaningful amount. And it’s something that, investors should consider.

Rena Sherbill: A worthy trick in the toolbox. Raul, appreciate this conversation. Another very edifying talk. Anything else to add before I let you go today?

Raul Shah: I think the only natural next episode would have to be tax gain harvesting, which is way better in my opinion than tax loss harvesting. So if you like this episode, you’re going to love that episode.

And it’s great actually for retirees. So a lot of people that listen to the podcast in that phase of life, you guys gotta hear that one.

Rena Sherbill: Perfect. Something to look forward to it in October. If you like loss, you’re gonna love gain. Looking forward to that, Raul, talk to you soon and enjoy September.

Raul Shah: Thank you, you too.

ST. LOUIS — Bunge Global SA is selling two of its Brazilian sugar cane mills to Chinese state-owned food processing holding company COFCO International.

The mills are located in the Junqueirópolis and Guararapes municipalities within the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The mills previously belonged to Canadian grain handling company Viterra Ltd. before Bunge acquired them in July 2025.

“As Bunge focuses on our strategic priorities and positions the business for long-term growth, this transaction is the right step forward,” said Julio Garros, chief operating officer of Bunge. “We are grateful to the sugar mills team for their dedication and contributions to the company.”

Bunge said the sale’s completion is subject to various customary closing conditions, including the receipt of necessary regulatory approvals.

Microsoft Outlook users began reporting a fresh wave of access problems Wednesday morning, with outage-tracking site Downdetector logging a spike in complaints starting around 9:58 a.m. EDT, extending a multi-day stretch of intermittent disruptions tied to a broader Microsoft 365 authentication issue.

The outage tracker’s official account flagged the renewed surge in a social media post shortly after the reports began, asking affected users how the disruption was impacting them and directing people to its live outage map for updates. The hashtag “MicrosoftOutlookDown” quickly began circulating online as users compared notes on the latest round of email trouble.

Wednesday’s reports mark the third consecutive day in which Outlook users have experienced some form of disruption tied to the underlying incident, which Microsoft has been tracking internally under case number MO1465074. The company has said the root cause traces back to a problem within a core authentication configuration shared across multiple Microsoft 365 services, rather than an issue isolated to Outlook alone.

The disruption originally began at 3:08 p.m. UTC on Monday, Aug. 31, according to Microsoft, when users first reported delays and failures sending and receiving email, along with authentication errors and problems searching mailbox content. Reports on Downdetector that day surged past 5,000 within a few hours of the initial onset, with additional complaints flooding social media platforms throughout the day.

Microsoft said its investigation initially pointed to a misconfiguration affecting how authentication components were deployed across a portion of its infrastructure, a problem the company said it was working to isolate through service telemetry and diagnostic review.

“We’ve confirmed that users may experience degraded functionality with various Exchange Online functionalities. We’re reviewing service telemetry and diagnostic data to isolate the source of the issue,” Microsoft said in an update posted to its Microsoft 365 Status account as the outage was unfolding Sunday into Monday.

By Monday evening, Microsoft reported that mail flow was gradually improving for affected users, though search functionality within Outlook remained degraded well into the night. The company said shortly after 3 a.m. ET on Tuesday that it was beginning to see improvements in that search functionality as well, as engineers continued rolling out fixes to the underlying authentication systems.

Even as conditions improved, full resolution proved elusive. On Tuesday, Microsoft acknowledged that its mitigation work was ongoing rather than complete.

“Our mitigation actions are continuing to progress within the remaining affected infrastructure,” Microsoft said in a Tuesday update. “Indications from telemetry remain positive, and we’ve confirmed service availability is improving. We’re entering a period of extended monitoring to ensure a full resolution is in place.”

By early Wednesday, Microsoft had indicated that service availability had stabilized significantly for most customers, reporting availability above 99% and stating that the majority of users should no longer be experiencing impact from the underlying issue. Wednesday morning’s renewed spike in Outlook-specific reports, however, suggests that some users continued to experience residual disruption even as the broader incident showed signs of resolution.

Independent outage-tracking services have separately noted that Outlook has experienced a pattern of intermittent reports throughout the week, distinct from, though related to, the larger authentication incident. One tracking service recorded a stream of Outlook-related reports beginning around 1:53 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, followed by another cluster of reports affecting hundreds of users around 1:35 p.m. that same day, illustrating the uneven, start-and-stop nature of the recovery process across the week.

Beyond Outlook itself, Microsoft has confirmed that the underlying authentication issue affected a range of other Microsoft 365 services this week, including OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft Defender XDR, the Microsoft 365 Admin Center and Universal Print. The breadth of services affected reflects how deeply many Microsoft 365 products rely on shared authentication infrastructure, meaning a single underlying configuration problem can ripple outward to affect multiple, seemingly unrelated tools used across an organization.

For businesses that rely heavily on Outlook and Exchange Online for daily communication, disruptions of this scale can have significant practical consequences, delaying internal and external correspondence and, in some cases, preventing employees from accessing scheduling, search or mailbox functions entirely. This week’s outage adds to a pattern of significant Microsoft 365 disruptions recorded so far in 2026, including a separate incident in January that stretched for roughly ten hours and affected Outlook, Defender and Purview, with reports on Downdetector during that earlier episode topping 15,000 at the peak of the disruption.

Microsoft has continued directing affected customers to its official Microsoft 365 Status page and social media account for updates as monitoring continues. The company has not yet published a detailed post-incident report explaining the specific technical root cause of the authentication misconfiguration or outlining steps it plans to take to prevent similar multi-day disruptions in the future, though such retrospective reports typically follow major incidents once monitoring periods conclude and engineering teams complete a full review.

As of Wednesday late morning, it remained unclear how long the residual Outlook-specific disruptions reported since 9:58 a.m. would persist, or whether they represented a new, isolated issue separate from the broader authentication problem that has affected Microsoft 365 services since Monday. Users experiencing ongoing trouble were advised to monitor official Microsoft support channels alongside independent outage trackers for the latest updates on service restoration.