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The Biden administration has unveiled a new $2 trillion infrastructure and economic recovery plan, the American Jobs Plan, which is designed to simultaneously revitalize the country’s infrastructure and combat climate change. The Plan will also give municipal investors an opportunity to focus on environmental or “green” project opportunities that range from investing in mass transportation to cleaner energy and water to climate-adaptive infrastructure.

Research has convincingly shown that having diversity of opinions and backgrounds is positively correlated with better decision-making and long-term results. In this two-part series, a deep dive looks at what it means to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into your investment program. First, we lay out why DEI initiatives are rapidly becoming a feature of investment programs and how they lead to better performance.

While implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has benefits in all walks of life, the investment marketplace is a highly impactful arena for driving DEI outcomes. After the first part of this series on DEI initiatives leading to better performance, a case is made for how pursuing the DEI effects is both a compelling and necessary strategy for investors.

For many investors, the desire to own commodities stems from the asset class’s inflation-hedging or portfolio-diversifying characteristics. While the most common way to get commodity exposure is by investing in a portfolio of commodity futures, many investors believe that owning a portfolio of natural resource stocks is an easier solution.

Investors occasionally look to their municipal bond portfolio for loss-harvesting opportunities that reduce the impact of capital gains taxes on portfolio returns. Learn how an active tax-loss management strategy ensures year-round performance, maximizes tax alpha, and minimizes costs.

What’s behind lower volatility forecasts: COVID-19 optimism or something more foreseeable? We take a deep dive into the numbers.

Screens and integration are essential yet distinct ESG incorporation techniques. Both are used to enhance the portfolio’s overall ESG characteristics but are quite different in terms of implementation and outcomes. The concepts are interconnected and lead to consequential decisions that can affect the performance of an investment portfolio, as well as real-world outcomes such as climate change or human rights.

Investors may be familiar with the many different ways the sale of a stock can be taxed, but the complexity of the code means there are optimal and suboptimal ways of navigating it. Using the five basic tools for building a comprehensive tax-management strategy is key to delivering highly tax-efficient investment performance.

Investors have shown renewed interest in President Biden's twin infrastructure proposals—the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—and what they will mean for their portfolios. With a focus on the tax changes that more directly affect equity investors, the road ahead should have fewer dangerous curves than some initially feared.

The perceived benefits of put options as a tool to protect against equity drawdowns are often outweighed by their complexity, implementation, and ongoing costs (both economic and behavioral). Investors are better served by adjusting a portfolio’s asset allocation. For those investors who must pursue a tail-risk hedge, a list of potential pitfalls and solutions is provided in the form of a case study.