Here's how Wall Street says to trade Trump's tax reform

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Here's how Wall Street says to trade Trump's tax reform

Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Corporations aren't the only ones set to profit from the Republican tax plan that's expected to be released this week.

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You can too - if you know where to look.

Just focus on the so-called "Trump trade," which involves betting on the areas of the market poised to benefit most from the pro-business policy overhaul being touted by the president.

Investors have already started piling back into the trade after a long hiatus, as they start to hope for real progress on the policy front.

But don't worry, you haven't missed much yet. If the plan arrives as expected, there's still a great deal of upside potential to be realized, especially since these same Trump-linked strategies retraced all of their post-election gains - and then some - as investors lost confidence in the president's proposed policies.

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Here's a quick primer on what matters to investors:

  • Though the Trump administration has released outlines of its objectives before, it's way behind schedule in terms of getting a detailed tax cut plan in front of Congress. That is supposed to happen in the coming week - maybe as soon as Monday.
  • The key measure investors are focusing on involves a lowering of the corporate tax rate from 35% to somewhere in the 20% range. Trump has pushed for 15% in the past, but that's being increasingly viewed as unviable.
  • Another that's being floated is a one-time repatriation tax holiday for companies holding trillions of dollars overseas. They'd be allowed to bring that cash back to the US at a lower than usual rate. It could spur investment in the US, but it's also very likely to wind up being used to pay dividends and buyback shares.
  • Another element that investors could trade on is the ability to immediately expense capital expenditures.

The two most straightforward Trump trades involve buying stock in two types of companies: (1) Those that pay the most taxes and (2) Those that hold the most cash overseas. Lucky for you, both Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan have baskets tracking both groups.

For more detail, here's a breakdown of how those two firms, plus two other Wall Street titans, recommend investors play tax reform: