Mostly Voices [0:00]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. A different drummer.

Mostly Mary [0:18]

And now, coming to you from dead center on your dial, welcome to Risk Parity Radio, where we explore alternatives and asset allocations for the do-it-yourself investor. Broadcasting to you now from the comfort of his easy chair, here is your host, Frank Vasquez.

Mostly Uncle Frank [0:36]

Thank you, Mary, and welcome to Risk Parity Radio. If you have just stumbled in here, you will find that this podcast is kind of like a dive bar of personal finance and do-it-yourself investing. Expect the unexpected. It's a relatively small place. It's just me and Mary in here. And we only have a few mismatched bar stools and some easy chairs. We have no sponsors, we have no guests, and we have no expansion plans.

Mostly Voices [1:11]

I don't think I'd like another job.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:14]

There are basically two kinds of people that like to hang out in this little dive bar.

Mostly Voices [1:18]

You see, in this world, there's two kinds of people, my friend.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:22]

the smaller group are those who actually think the host is funny, regardless of the content of the podcast.

Mostly Voices [1:30]

Funny how? How am I funny?

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:34]

These include friends and family and a number of people named Abby.

Mostly Voices [1:38]

Abby someone. Abby who? Abby normal.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:44]

Abby normal. The larger group includes a number of highly successful do-it-yourself investors. many of whom have accumulated multimillion dollar portfolios over a period of years.

Mostly Mary [2:01]

The best Jerry, the best.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:05]

And they are here to share information and to gather information to help them continue managing their portfolios as they go forward, particularly as they get to their distribution or decumulation phases. of their financial life. What we do is if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to 11. Exactly. But whomever you are, you are welcome here. I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. But now onward to episode 280. Today on Risk Parity Radio, it's time for our weekly portfolio reviews. Of the seven sample portfolios you can find at www.riskparriyradio.com on the portfolios page. And we'll also talk about our distributions for August. It's like I took the wrong week to quit drinking. But before we get to that... I'm intrigued by this, how you say, emails. And... First off. First off, we have an email from Judy. and Judy Wright. Hi, Frank.

Mostly Mary [3:28]

I've been listening to your podcast for months now and have learned a lot. Wondering if you have an opinion on two things in the setting of today's interest rates and its effect on the long-term bond portion of risk parity portfolios. One, Michael Kitces has a December 2013 article on Risk Parity Portfolio and says volatility is something that can and should be managed on an ongoing basis, both with respect to individual investments in the portfolio and their volatility, and that as correlations shift over time, the overall portfolio volatility may change as well. And it too should be managed. And it just means that the inputs of expected return, volatility, and correlation should be proactively monitored and updated. So should we be updating given the circumstances? And second, any opinion on Bill Bernstein's new book and recommendations of holding only short-term treasuries? Thank you for all the education you are providing us, Judy.

Mostly Uncle Frank [4:32]

Well, these are two very interesting topics, so I'm glad you raised them. Let's talk about the Kitsis article first. I did go and pull it, and I would recommend everybody read it. It's from 2013, and it basically gives a good summary of risk parity concepts and investing from that time. It's very similar to what we talked about way back in episodes three, five, and seven of this podcast, and goes over similar material. But what this really gets at is what are the concepts that we are using from Risk Parity in constructing these do-it-yourself retirement portfolios that we talk about here, and which ones have we put by the wayside or are not following. And as we've talked about before, the classic idea of risk parity was to create a very conservative portfolio that looks a lot like that all season sample portfolio and then add leverage to it. Because the idea there is to try and balance out the risk of all the assets in it, which is generally measured by volatility, recognizing that volatility and risk are not exactly the same. They're just correlated. And then as you pointed out in your email and it's talked about in this article, if you are an active manager like a hedge fund managing a risk parity style portfolio, you might make adjustments to the allocations in the portfolio based on some volatility metrics that you have. And the other lever you might pull if you were trying to actively manage a portfolio like this would be to vary the amount of leverage that you put into it. Now, while those concepts are interesting for a professional manager who is really fixated on trying to take a pure risk parity approach in terms of balancing the allocation with volatility. They're honestly not that interesting for a do-it-yourself investor whose goal like ours is to simply come up with portfolios with a higher safe withdrawal rate than a 60/40 or a similar kind of portfolio without having to actively manage it. So we want a fixed allocation that we can just rebalance periodically. So let me just read you this little paragraph which describes what a professional manager might do with this. That's in the summary of the article. Kitsis writes, most risk parity investment strategies involve a very proactive monitoring process both to ensure that risk exposures remain well diversified and in balance per end, including regular rebalancing close per end, and to manage the leverage involved, especially if risk slash volatility rises. Some risk parity portfolios actually target a specific level of volatility and then monitor and manage total risk exposure to this volatility constrained target. And that's nice and interesting if you were trying to be an active manager and follow this theoretical construct, but as I said, that's not what we're trying to do. We also have a principle here called the simplicity principle that we want to have a reasonably simple do-it-yourself portfolio that somebody can understand and easily managed through rebalancing. We also are trying not to construct portfolios that have leverage except for these experiments are running. And as a consequence of that, we've raised the equity percentage from a traditional risk parity portfolio that might only have 25 or 30% in equities to something between 40 and 70%, which corresponds to the kinds of portfolios that typically have the highest projected safe withdrawal rates historically. Now if you go to page five of this paper, you see what we're actually following or trying to do here in terms of managing risk that we also talked about back in those early episodes. Let me just read you this and then we'll talk about this approach or this modification on page five, Kitsis writes, In addition, it is notable that some risk parity funds and managers prefer to determine their allocations based on the risks they are exposed to, not necessarily the risk premia they are trying to capture. For instance, Bridgewater, see figure 6 below, allocates the portfolio not based on the risk of asset classes per se, but various combinations of the rising or falling economic growth and rising or falling inflation. Asset classes are then evaluated based on their exposures to these fundamental risks and allocated accordingly. For instance, equities do best with economic growth and when there is stable or slightly declining inflation but do poorly with economic contraction and with either severe inflation or deflation, at least in the short term. Commodities perform well in growth scenarios but also in high inflation environments. Corporate bonds and spreads perform well in economic growth environments, but not necessarily in any other environment. Government bonds that are more interest sensitive perform poorly with economic growth, but well with economic contractions as interest rates get cut and can be a deflation hedge. The list goes on, but the fundamental point is that just allocating evenly amongst available asset classes may still not be as well diversified as trying to allocate amongst these various macroeconomic risks as a disproportionate number of asset classes, EG equities, commodities, corporate bonds still hinge primarily on the economic growth risk exposure. And this figure he recreates is one that we actually identified in a Bridgewater paper back in one of those early episodes. And what that little graphic shows is a four quadrant model where you're talking about rising growth or falling growth, rising inflation or falling inflation, then considering which assets do well in each of those environments, and then choosing your portfolio based on having something in each of those quadrants. And that's how you get this diversification. Now, while this is related to making those sort of raw volatility measurements and allocating that way, it is not the same thing. And this Bridgewater method is actually a more stable and robust method, which is why we use it. It's also a simpler method for allocation purposes, which is also why we use it. I'm not a smart man. And let me read another paragraph from page seven of this paper, which also gets at what we were trying to do here. Kitsis writes in this paragraph, Risk parity investors vary greatly in the extent and complexity of the ongoing monitoring process. In the simplest scenarios, funds are simply allocated evenly across a series of asset classes and rebalanced on a periodic basis back to the original allocation. A simple risk parity-like example of this would be the late Harry Brown's permanent portfolio, which has been around since the 1970s and simply maintains a static target allocation of 25% to each of stocks, bonds, gold, and cash, regularly rebalanced back to those target weightings. Notably, some would argue this isn't a true risk parity portfolio, as the risk and volatility of the 25% in stocks is still far greater than the 25% in cash. But it nonetheless represents the fundamental principle of even diversification I.E. Parity amongst multiple asset classes. That is the straight stuff, O' Funkmaster. And this is something we also talked about back in episodes three and five when we were talking about the history of portfolio construction and that Harry Brown's permanent portfolio was kind of a primitive stab at this concept of balancing out risks and also choosing assets that perform well in different economic environments. And it was actually out of that, that Tyler from Portfolio Charts evolved the Golden Butterfly Portfolio, which is simply a Harry Brown permanent portfolio with extra equities in it in the form of small cap value. I'm telling you fellas, you're gonna want that cowbell. Which is the same approach we've taken here. We're looking at a variety of asset classes. We know historically what kind of environments they do well or poorly in. And then the next question or the real question is, well, then how much of each one do you take? And how do you decide how much of each do you take? And what we're trying to do here is trying to achieve higher safe withdrawal rates. And so that is our basic metric and why we're running Monte Carlo simulations and other kinds of tests to see which combinations of these varied asset classes gets you those higher safe withdrawal rates. So you can see here that our goal is slightly different than the goal of somebody who is just academically trying to construct a risk parity portfolio because that person is not concerned with safe withdrawal rates. In fact, what they're probably concerned with is total returns for unit of risk. And there's a nice discussion and description of that in this Kitsas paper on page nine with a graph showing a risk parity style portfolio levered up to 160%. I also found it interesting that the leverage was 160% because that's the golden ratio. And it compares very favorable with a 60/40 or an S&P 500. over time. The last thing I found was very interesting was his discussion as to why it might be difficult for a financial advisor to get clients to follow this. Because the truth of it is when the stocks are performing well, say in a period like from 2010 to 2020, this kind of portfolio will underperform a portfolio that has more equities in it, it just will. Where this kind of portfolio shines is in decades like the 1970s, especially if you include some small cap value or commodities related things in your portfolio, and decades like the early 2000s. And the reason that's important is that is where your safe withdrawal rates actually come from, is from these bad periods, because a safe withdrawal rate is looking at what is the worst case scenario for any portfolio for any period of years that you're talking about. And so the reason that these kind of risk parity style portfolios have higher safe withdrawal rates than standard stock bond portfolios is because they do better in these bad periods. So it's an excellent article and thank you for bringing it to our attention. It makes a good companion piece with the rest of what we talk about here. The one thing I do think is missing though is he was not talking about this style of investing in terms of drawing down on it or what safe withdrawal rates would be. And I think once you apply that metric or that idea to this style of investing, you end up where we are with things like the Golden Butterfly and Golden Ratio sample portfolios. Now moving on to your second query, which is any opinion on Bill Bernstein's new book and recommendations of holding only short-term treasuries. All right, I'm assuming by Bill Bernstein's new book you're talking about his update to the Four Pillars of Investing. I think this is like the fourth edition. He actually had another book that came out a year or two ago that is kind of a update of the classic Charles Mackay popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds book from the 1840s. And I found that book extremely interesting. But that would take another podcast to talk about, so we're not gonna do that here. I have read earlier versions of the Four Pillars of Investing. I have not read the most recent one that came out, but I have listened to some interviews of Bill Bernstein that I think are instructive and may get at what you're talking about here. in addition to following what he does generally. And I think this is really a case where we need to apply Bruce Lee's adage, whenever you are presented with materials from an expert, your reaction should be to absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add something that is uniquely your own, which is one of our little adages on the website. Yes! So let's apply that to this situation. First, absorb what is useful. What has been useful and is still useful about the four pillars of investing is it gets at the fundamental idea that indexing in inexpensive funds is going to be your best approach and to stay away from high-priced funds and high-priced advisors. I drink your milkshake. I drink it up. It's a very similar idea as the one expressed by Jack Bogle back in Common Sense Investing. And while everybody accepts this idea today, back when he originally wrote Four Pillars of Investing, that was still a controversial idea. And this war really was not won until around 2010. in terms of the preferred approach for do-it-yourself investors. The other thing that is updated in this book that I'm aware of that is very useful is the concept of using factor investing as the basis for diversification within stock funds. And that has really been the most significant development for investing in stocks for do-it-yourself investors in say the past 10 to 15 years. and this war is still being fought. There are still people that look to diversify by headquarter location or dividends or some other non-essential characteristics as opposed to using the Fama-French factors and the research that has been done in connection with that. But all of some of the better writers in this area have adopted this, the people with the most experience I'm talking about, Bernstein, I'm talking about Larry Swedroe. I'm talking about Paul Merriman, whose foundation has only existed for about 10 years, but is largely devoted to spreading this idea. I think your best source for that is going to be Larry Swedroe's book from about 2017 or 2018. He wrote with a guy named Birken, I believe, but it's all about factor investing and the history of it. And why you want some of that small cap value. I gotta have more cowbell. I gotta have more cowbell. in addition to some of the other value related funds that you might acquire. All right, let's get to more of the fun stuff. What is useless about what Bernstein has to say? This is actually interesting. I'm going to link to a interview on the Long View that Bernstein recently did where he's being questioned by Christine Benz and Jeff Ptak. And they try to do this nicely as they are generally nice Nicer than I am about these things. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul. But they do point out that Bernstein has been overly pessimistic and wrong about predicting the future of returns. Wrong! Going back to his first book, he's always said that he thinks that returns in the future are going to be much worse than they have been in the past, based on some valuation metrics he's using. And they point out in the interview that if what he says in this recent book comes true, the next 30 years will be the worst 30 years in the past 100 years of investing and try to give him a chance to defend that. And frankly, he does not defend it very well. He does not grapple with why he's been wrong in the past and instead says, well, there were changes in interest rates. The truth is the methodology he's using trying to use valuation metrics to predict the future just does not work very well. And we know that from another Long View interview of Aswath Damodaran a few months ago, who is the master of all things valuation, and who said that even the best valuation metrics are only about 17% correlated with any kind of future prediction you might be making, so that Oswald the Motoran would not use those kind of metrics to make predictions as Bernstein has been doing, and is probably why Bernstein has been wrong about this for so long, and probably will be wrong about it in the future. At this point, if he's correct about this in the future, it will not be because he has abilities to predict the future of returns, it will be because he's lucky.

Mostly Voices [22:14]

A crystal ball can help you. It can guide you.

Mostly Uncle Frank [22:18]

Because you've been wrong about something for a couple of decades and you don't change what you're doing. That is what we call the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again, getting a bad result and expecting a different result next time you do it. Forget about it. Now what this gets to is, What I find the most interesting about all people that write about investing and present things to do it yourselfers is to ask the questions, what are they actually invested in in their personal portfolios and why? And so that is some information that I always track with respect to any of these folks. In this case, Bernstein is extremely conservative about his investing. I think he has something like a 2080 portfolio. 20% stocks and the rest of it in treasury bonds. And he's basically not spending much in retirement. He's way oversaved, which is another characteristic of a lot of people that write about this. They are way oversaved so that their withdrawal rates are 2% or less. And if your withdrawal rate is 2% or less, you can hold just about anything. Am I right or am I right or am I right? Right, right, right. The other thing that he's done recently, and we've talked about I think in episode 256, is that he's also created a 30-year bond ladder to take him from current age 74 out to age 104. And the reason he's done that and probably makes sense for him is that he is way over saved and his actual withdrawal of his funds is very low, and he's almost certainly going to die at his highest net worth unless he somehow changes what he's doing and starts spending more money or giving it away. But I think this all goes together as a package that because he is so pessimistic, even though he's been wrong, he's basically structured the rest of his investments around that kind of pessimism. But it is interesting, if you are that oversaved and are that pessimistic, it actually does not make much sense for you to invest much at all in standard portfolios, stock market portfolios or whatever. What makes the most sense is for you to use the bond ladder like he's been using and at his age to start using single premium immediate annuities because at his age, something like that's going to pay an 8% payout ratio. And so you'd only have to devote a very small amount of funds to essentially funding your lifestyle. So if you were to take, say, a quarter or a fifth of his assets and put it in that, that's going to cover all of his spending for many years to come. And I think that's one of the paradoxes of the oversaved, that I hear people talking about their complicated bucket strategies and all kinds of strange things they're doing and then you ultimately ask them, well, how much are you taking out of this? And they're saying, well, two and a half percent or something. If you're taking out less than 3%, that is your strategy. Don't spend much money. Your strategy is don't spend much money. The rest of this stuff, bond ladders or 2080 portfolios and other mental accounting or mechanisms, those aren't doing anything. Those aren't the reason your strategy is going to work. Your strategy is always going to work if you don't spend money. That's always going to work. But don't kid yourself because that is not what we're trying to do here. We're trying to spend more of our money or be able to spend more of our money. And in order to do that, then you do need to be looking at what we just talked about with respect to Kitsis's paper. How do you construct portfolios that yield higher safe withdrawal rates? And so that's what's kind of funny about Bernstein's predictions because if he believes in his predictions, it doesn't make any sense for him to invest in the stock market at all. He should be buying annuities. He should be doing these bond ladders because the annuity company is willing to take the average risk that he's not willing to take. So he's actually going to be better off buying a single premium immediate annuity than attempting to invest the money himself. because he believes that the future is going to be so grim that the annuity has to be paying out a lot more because they're just going to turn around and invest that money in markets or other things. That's the fact, Jack. That's the fact, Jack. But that also does eventually lead you back as to why he's fixated on short-term treasury bonds. And the reason he's fixated on those is because he's looking at bonds only for stability. Not really for their diversification qualities because he is so pessimistic about the future. But again, he would be better off taking that 50% of his assets that are in short-term bonds or at least 20% of it and putting it into a single premium immediate annuity at his age, it's gonna pay more, even accounting for inflation. Now, if you are using bonds for diversification, that is why you want them intermediate and longer term. if you are using bonds for stability, that is why you would want them for short term. And if you're using bonds for income, then you're going to be looking at things like municipal bonds and taxable accounts, preferred shares, and you could look at corporates and things like that, but usually that doesn't make sense when you compare with other options. In any event, it was also funny to me when I listened to this Morningstar interview of him, because Morningstar came out with their forecast last December, which were basically average kind of returns for the stock market over the next 30 or 40 years. And they're completely different than what Bernstein's assuming. So I can see why they would want to tweak him or poke him there. But that's also why I think this idea that you're gonna pull out some crystal ball with P/E ratios or other things in it. My name's Sonia.

Mostly Voices [28:18]

I'm gonna be showing you the crystal ball and how to use it or how I use it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [28:25]

is just ridiculous because we know it doesn't work. People have been trying to do this for the past 20 years and they haven't been able to do it properly. So they keep trying to tweak it and roll their crystal ball around or shine it up or do something else with it to get a different result. I would place it over a candle and it's through the candle that you will see the images into the crystal. And be better off just taking historical norms over the past 100 years and putting that aside and then working on your portfolio diversification. Getting back to this paradox, if you are that pessimistic about the stock market or financial markets in general, you should not be investing in them. You should just be calling it a day, buying the annuity, buying the bond ladder and being done with it. That would be my advice to Bernstein if he really believes what he's saying, because he would be able to spend more money that way. All right, third part of Bruce Lee's Maxim, add something that is uniquely your own. Well, we do that here by talking about even more diversification beyond simply looking at factor investing. We also think about different kinds of bonds, what they might mean for a portfolio, and then we look at alternative assets. I realize Bernstein's not willing to do that. Au contraire. And that's fine for him.

Mostly Voices [29:50]

Don't be saucy with me, Bernays.

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:54]

But lots of other people are, and lots of people have written a lot of papers and a lot of good work about better diversification of your investments. And this is an area he just completely ignores because he still wants to be foolishly consistent with what he said 20 years ago. which is also why this ridiculous prediction of the future comes out of him. He should probably just accept that he's not a good market timer either on a short or long term basis.

Mostly Voices [30:24]

Now you can also use the ball to connect to the spirit world.

Mostly Uncle Frank [30:27]

And thank you for that part of your email too. We've taken so much time on this, I think that'll be the only email we do today.

Mostly Voices [30:51]

And now for something completely different.

Mostly Uncle Frank [30:55]

And the something completely different is our weekly and monthly portfolio reviews of the seven sample portfolios you can find at www.riskparityradio.com/ portfolios. on the Portfolio's page. And just looking at the markets last week, it was one of the worst weeks since February or March, I think they said. One of the rating agencies downgraded US debt and everybody panicked a little bit. But it was interesting other commentators pointed out that this also happened on August 5th in 2011 or something like that. It ended up being kind of a blip on the map, but it did spark a rally in treasury bonds in the months after that, meaning that people actually bought more of them. Anyway, looking at these metrics, the S&P 500 was down 2.27% for the week. The NASDAQ was down 2.85%. Small cap value represented by the fund VIoV was not down so much. It was down only 0.92% for the week. Gold was up last week. Looks like our only winner.

Mostly Voices [32:04]

I love gold.

Mostly Uncle Frank [32:08]

Gold was up 0.94% for the week. Long-term treasury bonds represented by the fund VGLT were also down 2.87% for the week on the panic reaction. REITs represented by the fund REET were down 2.41%. Commodities represented by the fund, PTBC were down 0.54% for the week. Preferred shares represented by the fund PFF were down 1.10% for the week. And managed futures represented by the fund DBMF were down fractionally. They were really flat. They were down 0.15% for the week. Moving to these sample portfolios, the first one is this all seasons. This is that classic risk parity style portfolio we talked about earlier. And we keep it there as a reference portfolio, but it's only 30% in stocks. It's got 55% in intermediate and long-term treasury bonds, and the remaining 15% in gold and commodities. It was down 1.76% for the week. It's up 5.8% year to date, down 2. 73% since inception in July 2020. On the distributions we'll be taking $30 out of it for August. That's at a 4% annualized rate. That will come out of cash, which has accumulated, and we left over from our recent rebalancing. It will be $236 year to date and $1210 since inception in July 2020. Moving to these bread and butter Portfolios are next three, which correspond with the way we've modified risk parity concepts to develop portfolios with higher safe withdrawal rates, as we talked about before. First one is this golden butterfly. This is 40% in stocks divided into a total stock market fund and a small cap value fund, 40% in treasury bonds divided into long and short and 20% in gold at GLDM. It was down 1.3% for the week. It is up 6.96% year to date and up 14. 69% since inception in July 2020. We'll be taking $42 out of it for August. It's at a 5% annualized rate. We'll also come from accumulated cash left over from the rebalancings. And it'll be $328 year to date, $1,626 since inception in July 2020. Next one is this golden ratio. This one's 42% in stocks divided into three index funds, including some large cap growth and small cap value, 26% in long-term treasury bonds, 16% in gold, 10% in a reit fund, and 6% in a money market fund, from which we take all our distributions for this one. This one was down 1.8% for the week. It's up 7.75% year to date, and up 10.46% since inception in July 2020. We're taking $40 out of it from cash for August. It's at a 5% annualized rate. That'll be $316 year to date and $1,601 since inception in July 2020. Next one is this Risk Parity Ultimate, which is kind of our kitchen sink portfolio of 15 funds that I won't go through. It was down 2.04% for the week. It's up 8.91% year to date and up 2.93% since inception in July 2020. We're taking $44 out of it. It'll come out of the small cap value fund, VIOV, for August. It's at a 6% annualized rate. That'll be $342 year to date and $1,838 since inception in July 2020. Now moving to our experimental portfolios, where we run hideous experiments so you don't have to.

Mostly Voices [36:11]

Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, 54 inch wide gorilla? Is that what you're telling me? The first one is the Accelerated Permanent Portfolio. This one is 27.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:38]

5% in a levered bond fund, TMF, 25% in a levered stock fund, UPRO, 25% in PFF, that's a preferred shares fund, and 22.5% in gold, GLDM. It was down 4.79% for the week. Since it has about 100% leverage in it, that probably makes sense. It's up 9.3% year to date, but down 16.69% since inception in July 2020. We're taking $35 out of this from cash for August. It's at a 6% annualized rate. We've taken $275 out of it year to date and $2,100 out of it since inception in July 2020. Next one is the aggressive 50/50. basically half stocks and half bonds. It's our least diversified and most levered portfolio. It's 33% in a levered stock fund, UPRO, 33% in a levered bond fund, TMF, the remaining third divided into preferred shares, and an intermediate treasury bond fund is down 5.53% for the week. It's up 10.4% year to date, but down 23.51% since inception in July 2020. We'll be taking $33 out of it from the Levered Stock Fund UPRO for August. We'll be at a 6% annualized rate. That fund is now 40% of this portfolio. We may end up rebalancing this in the middle of the month. We'll see when we get there. That'll be $253 year to date and $2086 since inception in July 2020. And our last one is the Levered Golden Ratio. This is also our Youngest one, it's only been around since 2021. This one is 35% in a levered composite fund, NTSX, that's the S&P 500 in treasury bonds, 25% in gold, GLDM, 15% in the REIT, O, 10% each in a levered small cap fund and a levered bond fund, TNA and TMF, and the remaining 5% divided into a volatility fund and a Bitcoin fund. It was down 2.57% for the week. It's up 8% year to date, down 17. 31% since inception in July 2021. We're taking $31 out of this. It's coming out of NTSX for August. It's at a 5% annualized rate. It'll be $245 year to date and $1,055 since inception in July 2021. All in all, an ugly week. We can't have positive returns every week now, can we?

Mostly Voices [39:26]

But now I see our signal is beginning to fade.

Mostly Uncle Frank [39:29]

If you have comments or questions for me, please send them to frank@riskparityradio.com that email is frank@riskparityradio.com or you can go to the website www.riskparityradio.com and put your message into the contact form and I'll get it that way. If you haven't had a chance to do it, please go to your favorite podcast provider and like, subscribe, give me some stars, a review. That would be great. Mmmkay? Thank you once again for tuning in. This is Frank Vasquez with Risk Parity Radio signing off.

Mostly Mary [40:20]

[Fail] the Risk Parity Radio Show is hosted by Frank Vasquez. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial investment, tax, or legal advice. Please consult with your own advisors before taking any actions based on any information you have heard here, making sure to take into account your own personal circumstances.