The final stretch of the year is here. You know what that means: your portfolios, tax strategies, and nerves are all about to be stress-tested, all at once. 

To help lighten the load, we asked three advisors to weigh in on what they’re telling clients now, and what they’re watching most closely as 2025 winds down.

For Michelle Rand, president of Cascade Investors, the best cure for uncertainty is specificity. “Virtually everyone in my business that I know about is outsourcing investment management to mutual funds and ETFs, and we don’t do that,” she said. Instead, her firm builds portfolios by selecting individual securities that fit each client’s needs. “That’s what makes us different: individual asset management and a tilt for the portfolio toward what the client needs.”

ClientFirst Wealth Management’s Ed Mahaffy, by contrast, focuses on protecting clients from their own instincts. “The operative term is recency bias. People are conditioned to buy the dips," he said, “until that doesn’t work anymore.”

Finally, Paul Schatz of Heritage Capital embraces the idea that clients are paying for his firm’s specific expertise, and he accepts the accompanying power and responsibility. “What sets us apart is that we run all our money in-house,” he said. “For better or worse, when we do well, we’re the quarterback. When we do poorly, you know who to blame.”

As the calendar turns, all three advisors are deep in the weeds of planning season.

Rand emphasizes charitable giving this time of year. “We use the technique of qualified charitable distributions with clients a lot,” she said. “That’s money that comes out of an IRA directed instantly to a charity.” She’s also realizing losses in older bonds with 3%-4% coupons and reinvesting in higher-yield paper to “create a long stream of higher cash flow.”

Mahaffy sticks to fundamentals: “First, the standard list: maximize deductions, maximize retirement plan contributions, charitable giving.”

He’s also warning clients about the “de minimis tax trap” on deeply discounted municipal bonds, a sleeper issue many accountants miss. 

Meanwhile, Schatz is mainly focused on rollovers, thanks to both the time of year and the economic landscape. “Q4 is [...] Roth conversion season.” But in particular, “when markets decline, I pound the table incessantly about Roth conversions.”

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“For the first time in a couple of years, we’re pretty excited about municipal bonds,” Rand said, citing yields near 5% tax-free and record issuance as states fund infrastructure projects. “That’s a pretty compelling return, even when you compare it to stocks, when you consider the tax impact.”

Mahaffy agrees munis are worth attention, but for a different reason. “One obscure item (I do a lot of bonds, including munis): the de minimis tax on deeply discounted tax-frees.” He urges investors to understand that some “juicy” yields can be illusions once that tax treatment is factored in.

Mahaffy sees the biotech sector as a potential rebound play. “Knock on the index is quality of earnings,” he admitted. “But some are old biotechs pumping money into R&D; XBI gets a tailwind from rates coming down.”

Schatz was even more bullish: “Biotech looks like it’s breaking out and will be a sector pick into 2026 unless it melts higher this year.”

Rand is steering clear of anything tied to property markets. “Banks have so much credit linkage to real estate, I don’t want to own banks. So that takes REITs and banks off the table,” she said.

Schatz echoes the reticence to back banks amid falling rates. “We’ve owned financials almost all year; we still own them, but we’ll likely lighten up in Q4.”

On a similar note, Mahaffy worries more about housing’s reliance on lower long-term yields. “If [the 10-year] doesn’t play ball, housing won’t be boosted; Home Depot and multiplier chains from household formation won’t get the lift,” he noted, suggesting short-rate-driven ARMs might offer the only near-term relief.

Rand says volatility anxiety is a constant refrain today. But it also has been, for as long as she’s been in the business. 

“A lot of clients have said to me, ‘Things are so volatile. Things are so uncertain.’ I tell them: I’ve been doing this for 40 years. Things are always volatile and things are always uncertain.”

Investors have more pressing matters to focus on, to hear Mahaffy tell it. “Some have unrealistic ideas about their retirement budget given their resources, because they impute 12% a year on the S&P out into time.”

Schatz’s clients, for their part, have a more specific source of anxiety. But according to the advisor, it’s similarly misplaced.

“The number one concern from clients since 2016 is always politics,” he said. “Always. When Trump was in office, he was going to wreck the economy. When Biden came in, same thing. Every president since I started in 1988 has presided over new market highs. Presidents can’t stop capitalism or the economy. That’s the message: ignore politics. It’s a fool’s errand.”

Read more about these advisors’ perspectives on the market here: