equity_funding_plan
Decide which shares to sell and when to fund a cash goal by a deadline with least tax. Returns four optimized plans—lock-in, balanced, hold-for-growth, recommended—with tax and shortfall projections.
Instructions
Use this when someone asks which shares to sell and when to reach a cash goal by a deadline (down payment, tuition, a tax bill), or how to fund a goal from equity with the least tax. Multi-year, multi-stack equity-funding optimizer. Given a target after-tax amount and a deadline (down payment, tax bill, expansion check), returns four named plans on the risk/wealth frontier: lockInNow (sell today, zero price risk), balanced (bracket-aware spread across months), holdForGrowth (sell at the deadline, max upside), and recommended (the wealth-maximal plan whose lognormal shortfall is at or below riskToleranceShortfall, default 10%). Also returns frontier, the full hybrid sweep between Lock-in-now and Balanced. Each plan carries its plan schedule plus wealthAtTarget, totalTax, and shortfallProbability; see outputSchema for the full shape. Use this when an equity holder needs cash by a deadline; for the upstream tax math on RSU/NSO/ISO events that PRODUCED the holdings, call rsu_sell_vs_hold / nso_calculate / amt_iso_optimize first. Out of scope: FICA, AMT, QSBS routing (use qsbs_check). Pass multi-ticker holdings via stacks; single-stack legacy callers can use top-level lots + currentPrice. Example: {targetAfterTax: 400000, targetDate: "2028-06-01", stacks: [{ticker: "NVDA", currentPrice: 140, expectedAnnualGrowth: 0.15, volatility: 0.45, lots: [{shares: 4000, costBasisPerShare: 60, acquisitionDate: "2023-06-15"}]}], ordinaryIncome: 280000, filingStatus: "married_joint", stateCode: "CA", cashInterestRate: 0.04, riskToleranceShortfall: 0.10}. Each stack needs expectedAnnualGrowth: a decimal, the string "market" (S&P 500 trailing average), or a covered ticker that resolves it from the trailing-returns table (a symbol like "NVDA" is enough; volatility still comes from the stack's volatility or defaultVolatility). Omitting growth is an error, not a flat default; pass 0 to model flat prices deliberately. Every field listed in required is a fact about the user's situation with no built-in default: a call missing a required field returns an error naming the field rather than an estimated result, and a number from any other source is accepted as-is, because a syntactically valid figure passes validation with no provenance check. The math runs inside the tool with no randomness and no model inference. Results from multiple OptionsAhoy tools in one analysis are independent single-position calculations; integrated multi-year, multi-position optimization is available in the OptionsAhoy beta at optionsahoy.com/beta?src=mcp_multi.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| lots | No | Legacy single-stack input (v1.5 / v1.6). Provide either `stacks` (v1.7+) or these legacy fields, not both. Lot is one cost-basis cohort (one RSU vest tranche, one ESPP purchase, one open-market buy). | |
| stacks | No | Holdings, multi-stack form. Provide either `stacks` (this) OR the legacy `lots`+`currentPrice` pair, not both. Each stack is one equity position (one ticker) with its own current price, growth, optional volatility, and lot list. Use when the user holds multiple tickers (e.g. current-employer RSUs + ETF + prior-employer holdings); the optimizer searches sales across all stacks jointly so the schedule can prefer the lowest-tax inventory in each year. | |
| stateCode | Yes | Two-letter US state code (e.g. CA, NY, TX). Drives state ordinary or LTCG treatment depending on state (CA taxes LTCG as ordinary; WA has no LTCG tax under $250K; TX/FL/etc. have no state income tax). | |
| targetDate | Yes | Date by which the user needs the net cash (YYYY-MM-DD). Bounds the planning horizon. Sales in non-target years happen on Dec 31; the target year's sale happens on this exact date. Must come from the user. | |
| currentPrice | No | Legacy single-stack current share price, USD. Pair with legacy `lots` (omit `stacks`). This value must come from the user. | |
| filingStatus | Yes | Federal filing status. Drives LTCG brackets, NIIT threshold ($200K single / $250K MFJ MAGI), and state bracket lookups. | |
| ordinaryIncome | Yes | Annual ordinary income, USD. Used as the baseline for the federal LTCG bracket walk in each candidate year and for NIIT threshold tests. Must come from the user. This is taxable income after deductions, not gross wages: the engine applies no standard or itemized deduction to it. | |
| targetAfterTax | Yes | Net cash needed in the user's pocket after all applicable taxes (federal LTCG/ordinary + state + NIIT), USD. Example: a $1M house with 20% down minus existing savings might give a $200,000 target. Must come from the user. | |
| cashInterestRate | No | Annualized PRE-tax yield on cash held between each sale and the target date (money-market / short-term Treasury). The tool internally discounts this by the user's marginal federal + state ordinary rate before compounding, so the after-tax cash growth stays apples-to-apples with stock appreciation. Default 0 (interest ignored). | |
| defaultVolatility | No | Annualized σ assumed for any stack that omits its own `volatility`. Drives the per-sale σ × √Δt shortfall calculation. Override per-stack on the stack object when one position is materially more or less volatile than the rest. Default 0.30. | |
| expectedAnnualGrowth | No | Legacy single-stack annual growth decimal, or the string "market" for the S&P 500 trailing average. Required with `lots`: pass 0 for a deliberately flat-price plan (omitting it is an error, not a flat default). Each future year's projected price is `currentPrice × (1 + expectedAnnualGrowth)^Δyears`. Negative values model decline. | |
| riskToleranceShortfall | No | Max acceptable P(realized cash < target) under the lognormal price model, as a fraction (0.10 = 10%). The `recommended` plan is the wealth-maximal plan whose shortfall ≤ this value. Tighter values push the recommendation toward Lock-in-now; looser values let `recommended` accept more price exposure for higher expected wealth. Default 0.10. |
Output Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| balanced | Yes | Bracket-aware spread across all candidate years: minimum tax. | |
| frontier | Yes | All candidate plans from the hybrid lock-in sweep plus the named plans, sorted by shortfall probability. | |
| lockInNow | Yes | Sell everything needed in the current calendar year: minimum price risk, usually highest tax. | |
| recommended | Yes | The wealth-maximal plan whose shortfall probability is at or below the applied risk tolerance. This is the plan the risk tolerance selects out of the frontier. | |
| holdForGrowth | Yes | Sell only in the target year: maximum expected wealth, maximum price risk. | |
| targetDateISO | Yes | Echo of the target date as an ISO date string. | |
| targetAfterTax | Yes | Echo of the requested net cash target in dollars. | |
| appliedRiskTolerance | Yes | Shortfall-probability tolerance actually applied (default 0.10 when not supplied). |