Ballast
Ballast/Capital desk/No. 06

Decide · Capital desk · 2 minutes

Concentrated Position: Trim or Hold

One position built the fortune, and now it is the fortune — the oldest sentence in wealth. This instrument does the arithmetic that conversation needs: your exposure against the house line, the tax bill of returning to it, and what a bad year in that one name would take. What you do with the numbers is between you and your adviser.

Currency-agnostic · symbol only Rules version 1.0 Reviewed July 2026

Exposure and tax arithmetic only. This instrument does not know your situation and gives no investment advice.

The manifest — your numbers

Σ

Everything tied to the one name — shares, vested options, funds that are really it in costume.

Σ

Liquid and near-liquid holdings including the position. Leave the house out.

Σ

What you paid. Sets the embedded gain and the tax bill of trimming.

%

Your all-in marginal rate on realised gains, wherever you're taxed.

Sets the drawdown the stress line assumes: −50% single name, −35% sector, −20% broad index.

Nothing you type leaves this page. The instrument runs entirely in your browser; there is no account and no record.

The reading

Far above the line.

40%

of investable net worth riding in one name

The exposure ledger

Concentration — the position over the pile
The house line
Riding above the line
Embedded gain in the position
Tax bill to return to the line

Three bad years in that name

If it fellYou'd give backOf your net worth

What moves this result

What would sink this reading

Correlation hides here. If your salary, options and pension ride the same name as the position, your true concentration is higher than the number above.

Lock-ups, blackout windows and restricted stock can make the tax bill the smaller obstacle. Arithmetic can't see a trading window.

Concentration built the pile — every great fortune violated this line on the way up. The line is about keeping fortunes, which is a different sport from making them.

Questions people bring to this desk

How much of my net worth in one stock is too much?
Common practitioner conventions run 5–15% of investable net worth in a single name; this instrument draws its line at 10%, sized so a −50% event costs at most 5% of the pile. Where your line sits is a judgment — the instrument just shows where you stand against one.
What does it cost in tax to diversify a concentrated position?
The excess above your line, times the gain fraction embedded in it, times your capital-gains rate. A $1.2M position with a $300K basis, trimmed back to 10% of a $3M pile at a 25% rate, owes roughly $169K — the exact figure prints above for your inputs.
What is the downside of holding a concentrated position?
Single names halve; broad markets rarely do. The stress table prices a −50%, −35% and −20% year in your position in money and as a share of net worth — often several times the tax bill that trimming would have cost.
Methodology — the formula, printed

Everything below is calculated from your inputs. Nothing is fetched, no market data is used, and no recommendation is produced.

concentration = position / net_worth excess = max(position − 10%·net_worth, 0) gain_fraction = max(position − basis, 0) / position tax_to_line = excess × gain_fraction × tax_rate stress = position × drawdown (−50% / −35% / −20%)

The house line sits at 10% of investable net worth in any single name — a common practitioner convention, chosen here so that a −50% event in the position costs at most 5% of the pile. It is a convention, not advice; some houses run 5%, some 15%.

Limitations. Staged sales across tax years, hedging with options or collars, exchange funds and charitable routes can all change the tax figure materially — and are exactly the conversation to have with an adviser, holding this page's numbers.