Alphathena, a leader in AI-enhanced direct indexing for financial advisors and winner of the 2025 WealthManagement.com Industry Award for Direct Indexing, today announced the launch of Long/Short Leveraged Direct Indexing, giving advisors everywhere access to a sophisticated investing approach once reserved for institutional investors.
The new long/short capabilities, including workflows enhanced by AI, will be available for all Alphathena users with Schwab, Fidelity, and Interactive Brokers margin accounts. There are no additional fees or setup required at this time.
Advisors can now build long/short strategies, of any leverage combination up to 200/100, that combine long and short positions, enabling them to directly invest in what they believe in and avoid what they don’t, all while keeping total market exposure consistent.
Alphathena’s Long/Short Direct Indexing also expands tax-loss harvesting opportunities into any market environment. In rising markets, short positions can generate losses; in falling markets, long positions can do the same, while managing the overall risk and performance to the benchmark. As a result, an advisor’s clients can benefit more frequently from their advisor’s tax planning skill, and advisors can generate consistent portfolio tax alpha.
“Long/Short has traditionally been seen as the domain of hedge funds and institutions focused on performance alpha,” said Mohan Naidu, co-founder and CEO of Alphathena. “We’ve made it accessible, intuitive, and fully automated for advisors who want to bring precision, personalization, and greater tax efficiency to the portfolios they manage.”
The new capability also supports custom factor and theme tilts, allowing advisors to align portfolios with client priorities and values such as a preference for clean energy, growth-oriented stocks, or low volatility, while avoiding exposures that clients want to sidestep.
Behind the scenes, Alphathena’s AI-driven platform handles the portfolio construction, trading, borrow cost management, and risk controls. Advisors set the strategy, and Alphathena’s technology runs it, with no third-party managers or handoffs.
Key Benefits of Long/Short Direct Indexing
- Works seamlessly with Schwab, Fidelity, and Interactive Brokers margin accounts.
- Supports long and short exposures, including popular strategies like 130/30 and 150/50, with flexibility up to 200/100.
- Reduces portfolio ossification and increases tax-loss harvesting opportunities in both bull and bear markets.
- Allows thematic and factor tilts for deeper personalization.
- Automates execution, risk controls, and borrow cost management.
- Keeps advisors fully in control with no outsourcing to a third-party manager.
“Technology-driven long/short capability is exactly the kind of forward-looking innovation that advisors need to deliver exceptional tax efficiency for their clients,” said Bill Harris, founder of Evergreen Wealth. “I’m excited to see Alphathena continue to advance the frontier of wealth management.”
Request Your Copy of Alphathena’s Long/Short Direct Indexing Research Paper
To help advisors understand the practical application of long/short direct indexing, Alphathena’s leadership team has written an academic research paper, Long/Short Direct Indexing: A Framework for Sustainable Tax Alpha.
The white paper expands on the quantitative models, backtests, and complete methodology used by Alphathena to construct its optimized long-short framework.
The white paper is for investment professional use only and available by request. Click here to request your copy now.
