What investors ask us

Cash in Treasury bills is the only holding that has never lost more than 0.1% in a big sell-off since 2007. It pays about 4%, and it funds withdrawals and rebalancing after a crash without forcing a sale of something that has just fallen.

Gold is one of the few assets with near-zero correlation to stocks, and it protects against inflation, a weak dollar and shocks to policy credibility. It is sized for diversification, not expected return: 5% in Balanced and 4% in Aggressive. Its valuation is high, about 14% above the 1980 inflation-adjusted peak in October 2026, so quarterly rebalancing trims it after rallies. It is not a liquidity-crash hedge: it fell with stocks in March 2020 and March 2026.

Commodities were the only asset that rose in 2022, when stocks and bonds fell together. With inflation at 3.7% in September 2026 and oil supply disrupted, the portfolios keep that insurance. The cost is visible: a repeat of the 2008 or 2015 sell-offs would cost about 4% of portfolio value through this sleeve, and up to about 8% at the very bottom of the 2008 commodity crash.

Trend has paid in slow bear markets and inflation shocks: +18% in the 2007–09 crash (stand-in funds) and +32% in the 2022 sell-off. It loses in fast V-shaped crashes and choppy years, which Treasuries, cash and BTAL cover. Without DBMF both portfolios would have returned a little more since 2008, because stocks did so well, but they would have fallen further in 2007–09 and 2022 (Aggressive: 41% instead of 34% in 2007–09) and had a lower Sharpe ratio.

Tech, held through XLK, is 33% of Aggressive and 15% of Balanced, so it is the largest single risk in both. The weights are fixed and rebalanced back to target, so gains are banked as they come. The rest of Aggressive is dividend stocks, health care, equal-weight, infrastructure, commodities, trend, gold, Treasuries and an anti-beta hedge. In the 2000–02 dot-com crash, when XLK fell 80%, today's weights would have lost 35% at the worst point, against 45% for the S&P 500 (monthly data, with the stand-ins described in Methodology). In the 2022 sell-off Aggressive fell 10% while the S&P 500 fell 24%, and in the June–July 2026 AI-chip crash, when semiconductor stocks fell 25%, it fell 2%.

In 2022 stocks and bonds fell together: the S&P 500 fell 24% and IEF 15%. What cushioned the portfolios was commodities (HGER +16%), trend (DBMF +32%) and BTAL (+17%). From the S&P 500's high in January to its low in October, Balanced fell 5% and Aggressive 10%, while a 60/40 portfolio fell 21%.

Weighted by holding, fund fees are about 0.35% a year for Balanced and 0.34% for Aggressive. Every simulated trade is charged 0.20% on each dollar bought and sold, and the history shown includes this cost. Rebalancing every quarter trades about 20% of the portfolio a year, so trading costs about 0.04% a year.

No. The portfolios use no leverage and take no short positions: weights are long-only and add up to 100%. Some funds use derivatives inside their own structure: DBMF holds futures, HGER holds commodity swaps and BTAL is long and short stocks.

Every quarter. At the close of the first trading session of each quarter, every holding is traded back to its exact target weight, however small the drift. This trims what has rallied, such as gold, and adds to what has fallen. Each rebalance is charged 0.20% on every dollar bought and sold.