What Is Direct Indexing?
什么是直接指数化？

Index funds are popular investment choices for good reason—they’re often cheap, diversified, and uncomplicated portfolio building blocks.
指数基金因其诸多优点而成为受欢迎的投资选择——它们通常成本低廉、分散投资且是构建投资组合的简单基础。

What Is an Index Fund?
什么是指数基金？

When you own shares of an index fund, you own the stocks in the index fund indirectly, in the same proportion as the index. For example: Let’s say you invested $100,000 in an index fund that tracks the S&P 500. Because the S&P 500 is tilted toward the largest companies in the market, you have some pretty sizable stakes in some of these big blue chips—nearly $6,000 in Apple AAPL; over $5,000 in Microsoft MSFT; $4,000 in Amazon.com AMZN, and so on.
当你持有指数基金的股票时，你间接地按指数的比例持有了该指数基金中的股票。例如：假设你投资了 10 万美元于追踪标普 500 指数的指数基金。由于标普 500 指数偏向于市场中最大的公司，因此你在这些大型蓝筹股中拥有相当可观的股份——接近 6000 美元的苹果公司股票（AAPL）；超过 5000 美元的微软公司股票（MSFT）；4000 美元的亚马逊公司股票（AMZN），等等。

What Does It Mean to Own Stocks Indirectly?
间接持有股票是什么意思？

Indirect ownership means that even though you are exposed to the companies’ fortunes and failures, you don’t have the benefits of direct ownership.
间接所有权意味着，尽管你面临着公司成败的风险，但你无法享受直接所有权的权益。

For instance, even though you may have thousands of dollars committed to these companies, an invitation to the shareholders’ meeting will not be forthcoming. Nor do you have a say in board member elections—the portfolio manager that runs the index fund votes in shareholder elections on your behalf.
例如，尽管你可能已向这些公司投入了数千美元，但不会收到股东大会的邀请。你也没有董事会成员选举的发言权——管理指数基金的投资组合经理会代表你行使股东选举权。

You also can’t buy and sell the underlying securities, or trim any of the positions in the index fund for any reason. What if you thought Apple was overvalued and wanted to reduce your position? You’re out of luck as an index fundholder. What if Meta’s META data privacy and security issues give you pause, and you want to remove it from your portfolio? As an index fund investor, you are stuck holding the stock as long as it’s in the index.
您也无法买卖标的证券，或出于任何原因调整指数基金中的任何头寸。如果您认为苹果被高估并希望减少持仓，作为指数基金持有者，您将无计可施。如果 Meta 的 META 数据隐私和安全问题让您犹豫，并希望将其从投资组合中剔除，作为指数基金投资者，只要该股票仍在指数中，您就只能继续持有。

How Does Direct Indexing Work?
直接指数化如何运作？

Direct indexing means you own the stocks in the index directly. It’s a pretty straightforward idea, but most people don’t do it, and those who do are usually working with an advisor in a separately managed account. For one thing, some indexes track areas of the market that aren’t as “liquid,” meaning the component securities can be thinly traded and priced inefficiently. Funds that track such indexes often use a sampling or optimization method to mimic the performance of an index.
直接指数化意味着你直接持有指数中的股票。这是一个相当直接的概念，但大多数人并不这样做，而那些这样做的人通常是在一个独立管理账户中与顾问合作。一方面，一些指数追踪的市场领域并不那么“流动”，这意味着成分证券可能交易稀少且定价效率低下。追踪此类指数的基金通常使用抽样或优化方法来模拟指数的表现。

But even the S&P 500, which is a relatively compact index comprising very liquid (easily tradable) stocks, isn’t that easy to replicate. One barrier to doing this, traditionally, is that you can’t buy every stock in the index if you don’t have a lot of money to invest. This is essentially why mutual funds were created; they allow investors to pool their money with other investors, so they could buy hundreds or even thousands of securities and build diversified portfolios.
但即便是标普 500 指数，这个由流动性极强（易于交易）的股票组成的相对紧凑的指数，也并非那么容易复制。传统上，实现这一目标的一个障碍是，如果你没有大量资金用于投资，就无法购买该指数中的每一只股票。这正是共同基金创立的根本原因；它们允许投资者与其他投资者汇集资金，从而能够购买数百甚至数千种证券，构建多元化的投资组合。

Two things that have made direct indexing a more viable option for more investors in recent years are the rise of commission-free trading, and fractional-share stock investing, which allows investors to purchase fractional shares in a certain dollar amount. Because stock prices vary so widely, having the ability to invest fractionally makes it much easier to match the index’s proportions.
近年来，两项因素使得直接指数化成为更多投资者的可行选择：一是免佣金交易的兴起，二是允许投资者按特定金额购买部分股票的零股交易。由于股票价格差异巨大，能够进行部分投资使得更易于匹配指数的比例。

Robinhood HOOD, Schwab SCHW, Fidelity, and Vanguard are among the brokerages that offer fractional stock investing on their platforms.
Robinhood HOOD、Schwab SCHW、富达和先锋等券商均在其平台上提供股票分拆投资服务。

What Are the Benefits of Direct Indexing?
直接指数化的好处是什么？

When you own the stocks directly, you are ultimately the portfolio manager.
当你直接持有股票时，你最终就是投资组合的管理者。

That means you can customize the index if you want to. Are there securities in the index that don’t align with your values, from an environmental, social, and governance perspective perhaps? Direct indexing allows you to sell or avoid them. One thing to be aware of: If your version of the index starts to look a lot different from the “real” index in terms of sector weightings and so on, the performance won’t match up, either. This is called tracking error.
这意味着，如果你愿意，可以定制该指数。是否存在某些证券，从环境、社会和治理的角度来看，它们与你的价值观不符？直接指数化允许你出售或避开它们。需要注意的一点是：如果你的指数版本在行业权重等方面开始与“真实”指数大相径庭，那么其表现也将无法匹配。这种现象被称为跟踪误差。

What Is Tax-Loss Harvesting?
什么是税务亏损收割？

You also can optimize your brokerage account from a tax perspective by “harvesting” your losses. Essentially, tax-loss harvesting works like this:
您还可以通过“收获”损失从税务角度优化您的经纪账户。本质上，税务损失收获的工作原理是这样的：

• Find stocks in your portfolio that have lost money since you purchased them.
  找出您投资组合中自购买以来亏损的股票。
• Sell them. 卖掉它们。
• Rebalance your portfolio back to target allocations using the proceeds (but don’t repurchase the same company or one similar enough to trigger a wash sale). You can use the capital loss from the sale to reduce your overall tax liability.
  利用出售所得将您的投资组合重新平衡至目标配置（但不要回购同一家公司或足以触发洗售的类似公司）。您可以利用此次出售产生的资本损失来减少整体税务负担。

“What direct indexing does is it tailors an index to meet an investor’s specific circumstances, and optimizes for things like taxes, or ESG exposure, or factor exposure,” says Ben Johnson, head of client solutions for Morningstar.
晨星公司客户解决方案主管本·约翰逊表示：“直接指数化的作用在于，它将一个指数定制化，以满足投资者的具体情况，并针对税收、ESG 敞口或因子敞口等因素进行优化。”

"Where that lands an investor is a place that looks very different from starting point, which was a broad-based, market-cap-weighted index. But it’s been cut to fit their preferences, so it’s ultimately going to take the shape of a separately managed account. How they get from that starting point to that tailored portfolio is increasingly some sort of software application that brings to bear all of the data around taxes, tax preferences, and tax lots; ESG criteria; factor exposures; you name it."
投资者最终所处的位置与起点大相径庭，起点是一个广泛基础、市值加权的指数。但经过调整以适应他们的偏好，最终将呈现出独立管理账户的形态。他们如何从起点到达这个定制化的投资组合，越来越多地依赖于某种软件应用，该应用整合了围绕税收、税务偏好和税块、ESG 标准、因子敞口等所有数据。

What Are the Drawbacks of Direct Indexing?
直接指数化的缺点是什么？

Direct indexing really only makes sense for people who have a considerable amount to invest in a taxable account and want a level of customization they couldn’t otherwise obtain through a portfolio of funds or individual securities. If you invest in a tax-deferred account, such as a 401(k) or IRA, the tax-harvesting benefits of direct indexing are of no benefit to you. In addition, the tax-loss selling strategy itself invites risk and is best done with the help of an advisor or tax professional. There is no guarantee that you will maximize value by tax-loss selling. Perhaps holding on to the slumping stock would have turned out to be the better move in the long term.
直接指数化真正有意义的仅限于那些在应税账户中有相当可观投资且希望获得通过基金组合或个股无法实现的定制化程度的人群。若您投资于递延纳税账户，如 401(k)或 IRA，直接指数化的税收优化优势对您并无裨益。此外，税收亏损卖出策略本身蕴含风险，最好在顾问或税务专业人士的协助下进行。无法保证通过税收亏损卖出一定能最大化价值。或许长期来看，持有那些表现不佳的股票反而会是更佳的选择。

In addition, portfolio customization can get really complicated, really quickly. The idea of being able to customize your portfolio from an ESG or factor exposure perspective may be appealing, but keeping track of all the moving data points on 500 separate securities can be daunting.
此外，投资组合定制可能会迅速变得非常复杂。从 ESG 或因子暴露角度定制投资组合的想法可能很吸引人，但要跟踪 500 种不同证券的所有动态数据点却可能令人望而生畏。

You would also have to keep tabs on changes in the index—rebalances and reconstitutions—to make sure you know which securities are added and removed from the index. Traditional index funds and exchange-traded funds do this for you for a (typically reasonable) annual fee. The asset-weighted average expense ratio for passive funds was around 0.40% in 2021, according to Morningstar’s annual fund fee study.
您还需要密切关注指数的变化——包括再平衡和重构——以确保了解哪些证券被添加或移出指数。传统的指数基金和交易所交易基金通常会为此收取（通常合理的）年度费用。根据晨星公司的年度基金费用研究，2021 年被动型基金的资产加权平均费用比率约为 0.40%。

And finally—and this is the big one, in my mind—watch out for expenses. Not only do you pay asset-based fees for the direct-indexing account, but these fees may be a multiple of what you’d pay for a diversified portfolio of ETFs or index funds, Johnson notes.
最后——在我看来这是最重要的一点——要警惕费用。约翰逊指出，你不仅要为直接指数化账户支付基于资产的费用，而且这些费用可能是你为多元化 ETF 或指数基金组合所支付费用的数倍。

Also, Johnson says, there may be frictional costs that you don’t really see or are difficult to measure that are involved with direct indexing. Bear in mind that S&P 500 index trackers are low-turnover strategies, meaning they don’t buy and sell too many stocks (the portfolio turnover rate is around 4%). The more you start trading and customizing positions in a direct-indexing portfolio, the more possibilities you have to encounter transaction costs, which will ultimately eat into your return.
此外，约翰逊表示，直接指数化可能涉及一些摩擦成本，这些成本你未必能真正看到或难以衡量。请记住，标普 500 指数追踪策略是低换手率的策略，意味着它们不会频繁买卖股票（投资组合换手率约为 4%）。当你开始在直接指数化投资组合中频繁交易和定制仓位时，遭遇交易成本的可能性就越大，这些成本最终会侵蚀你的回报。

Is Direct Indexing Right for You?
直接指数化适合您吗？

Direct indexing allows investors and advisors to build a portfolio that is quite different from the broad market or a broad-based index fund, Johnson explains. Over time that may result in better risk-adjusted returns, but for many active managers, it results in worse returns.
约翰逊解释说，直接指数化使投资者和顾问能够构建一个与广泛市场或基于广泛市场的指数基金截然不同的投资组合。随着时间的推移，这可能会带来更好的风险调整后回报，但对于许多主动管理者来说，结果却是回报更差。

“[Direct indexing] makes a large number of investors effectively active managers,” Johnson says. “And what we know about active management, about being different from the market, is that sometimes it’s going to look right and feel good, and sometimes it’s going to look wrong and feel bad.”

In Johnson's opinion, this is a risk, or opportunity cost, of constructing your portfolio using direct indexing versus using traditional mutual funds or ETFs.
在约翰逊看来，这是使用直接指数化构建投资组合而非传统共同基金或 ETF 所承担的风险，或者说机会成本。

“There could be circumstances where [investors] would probably be better served—they would have gotten greater returns with less risk—by simply owning broad-based index mutual funds or discretionary active funds.”
“在某些情况下，投资者可能更适合——他们能以更低的风险获得更高的回报——通过简单地持有广泛基础的指数共同基金或自主管理的主动型基金。”