Assess your investment positions

If you had stock-market investments and left them alone for the past eight years, give yourself a medal. The market has gone almost straight up over that period, rewarding investors who held on.

While it’s anyone’s guess whether that trend will continue, it’s certainly wise to assess your positions and possibly rebalance your holdings by pulling some money out of high-flying assets and reinvesting in laggards.

It’s also a good time to assess the riskiness of your investments — and not only on the stock side. If interest rates continue rising, bond investments will be under pressure. Yet nearly one-third of respondents surveyed recently by financial giant BlackRock indicated, incorrectly, that fixed-income instruments can’t lose money. In truth, longer-maturity bonds historically have dropped in price about as often as stocks, though the magnitude of decline is usually much steeper with stocks.

Analyze rates and fees

Credit cards, checking accounts, mutual funds — various fees typically apply to these and other financial accounts. On the credit-card side, interest rates have been rising and likely will continue that trend. Plus, cards come with various fees such as those for balance transfers, cash advances and expedited payments, along with annual fees and late-payment fees. Comparison shopping for credit cards from time to time is smart.

So too with checking accounts. Overdraft fees and ATM-withdrawal fees generally have been on the upswing, though more large banks — nearly four in 10 — are now offering free checking accounts, with no balance requirements or monthly fees, reports researcher Bankrate.com.

While you’re at it, sign up for bank-account alerts that send notifications when you’re at risk of triggering a low-balance or insufficient-funds fee. Alerts also can signal unauthorized activity in your account.

One favorable trend is that annual fees on mutual funds have been declining for years. For example, average annual expenses paid by participants on funds offered in 401(k)-style retirement plans now stand at 0.48 percent on stock funds and 0.35 percent on bond funds, according to an update by the Investment Company Institute. Those figures equate to $4.80 a year for each $1,000 invested in stock funds and $3.50 on the bond side. If you’re paying more, it might be time to find other fund choices.

Assess your income-tax situation

When 2017 dawned, tax reform looked like a strong possibility, with president Trump vowing to cut taxes, eliminate some deductions and simplify the code in various ways. At midyear, it now appears less likely that reform will happen anytime soon.

That means those old standby strategies — take as many deductions as available this year while deferring income to next year — still apply for many taxpayers. Among other general tips, you might want to assess whether you are subject to making estimated payments and check whether the amount you’re having withheld from paychecks is sufficient.

Also, it’s not too early to start thinking about managing taxable investment gains and losses.

You may offset gains with losses and — to the extent you have excess losses — use them to shelter up to $3,000 in ordinary income per year.