A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Inside Wealth newsletter with Robert Frank, a weekly guide to the high-net-worth investor and consumer. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. Wealthy investors have made the best trade over the past week — largely doing nothing. While many hedge funds and institutions have been selling over the past week, wealthy individual investors were largely sitting tight or even doing a little buying. Interviews with several top executives in wealth management suggest that unlike the crashes in 2020 or 2008, high-net-worth investors were feeling less pressure to sell over the past week. Some started buying Friday afternoon. And many used the lower prices as an opportunity to do some tax-loss harvesting and estate planning. Here’s what advisors to the wealthy say their clients are responding to the market roller coaster. John Mathews, head of private wealth management for the Americas at UBS Like most Americans, wealthy investors are feeling a wide range of emotions from the market and policy turmoil. They’re split down political lines, which shape their economic outlook and investment impulses, according to Mathews. “Our job is to take the emotion out of it and try to level-set,” Mathews said. “Most of the time we’re psychologists.” That helped clients to avoid making big trades or financial decisions based on feeling over logic. Mathews said many UBS clients started trimming their stocks and “de-risking” in January. While markets were soaring in the first two months of the year on hopes for the new Trump administration, many of the wealthy were selling and adding cash. Their large cash cushion helped keep the …
