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.

Mostly Mary [0:18]

A different drummer. 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 are new here and wonder what we are talking about, you may wish to go back and listen to some of the foundational episodes for this program. Yeah, baby, yeah! And the basic foundational episodes are episodes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Some of our listeners, including Karen and Chris, have identified additional episodes that you may consider foundational. And those are episodes 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 56, 82, and 184. And you probably should check those out too because we have the The finest podcast audience available.

Mostly Voices [1:28]

Top drawer, really top drawer.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:31]

Along with a host named after a hot dog.

Mostly Voices [1:35]

Lighten up, Francis.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:38]

But now onward, episode 303. Today on Risk Parity Radio, it's time for our weekly portfolio reviews of the seven sample portfolios. You can find that www.riskparityradio.com. On the portfolios page.

Mostly Voices [1:55]

A little preview of that. Boring. I'm putting you to sleep. But before I put you to sleep with that, I'm intrigued by this.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:03]

How you say, emails.

Mostly Voices [2:07]

And?

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:10]

First off, we have an email from Steve.

Mostly Mary [2:14]

Hey, Steve. And Steve writes, Dear Frank and Mary, one, incoming donation to the Father McKenna Center. Yeah, baby, yeah.

Mostly Voices [2:26]

Thank you so much for your coaching session last October.

Mostly Mary [2:30]

It has guided our thinking for the last year and will guide future portfolio construction. I chose to donate one hour's worth of Frank's time spent coaching. Enjoy the hour off.

Mostly Voices [2:43]

You can't touch this. You can't touch this.

Mostly Mary [2:50]

Two, I'm hoping you can pontificate here rather than give specific tax advice. I was listening to Rob Berger's podcast, the Rob Berger Show, number 122, on how to buy gold. At the five-minute mark, he reveals being strongly against owning a fund such as GDLM in a taxable account, as it is treated as a collectible rather than a capital gain. Is there any additional reason, as far as you can tell, that an ETF backed by physical gold, such as GLDM, would pose a tax advantage? I was also surprised to hear that taxes on ETFs using futures contracts, e.g. IaUF, are due yearly, and not just upon selling the ETF as an individual investor. I believe he references this article. Three, if it is advantageous to the portfolio to own gold as an uncorrelated diversifier, Would it make sense to own some silver too? Silver! I know these two metals are not perfectly correlated to each other, about 0. 8%, and it thus seems that there could be additional advantage, albeit likely minor and incremental, to further diversifying this part of the portfolio. I'm not sure if the back testing is as robust, But perhaps there could be a benefit when it comes to rebalancing. Looking at the ETF SIVR, which again seems backed by physical silver. One of your top thousand fans, Steve.

Mostly Voices [4:26]

I'll get you a Steve if it's the last thing I do.

Mostly Uncle Frank [4:30]

All right, taking your points in order. Number one, thank you for your donation to the Father McKenna Center. Yes!

Mostly Voices [4:38]

As most of you know, we do not have any sponsors here, but we do

Mostly Uncle Frank [4:42]

have a charity. The Father McKenna Center, which serves homeless and hungry people in Washington, DC. And it's a relatively small charity, and I am on the board and the treasurer. And if you donate to the charity, you get to go to the front of the email line, as Steve has done here. Hey, Steve! You also mentioned financial coaching, which we did with you last year. I have the memo. That is not something I advertise. It's only by popular demand because I don't want to make a side career hustle out of that.

Mostly Voices [5:19]

Not going to do it. Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture.

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:23]

But if you're interested, you can email me at frank@riskparityradio.com It is $300 an hour and it's a two-hour minimum. just so you're aware, just to keep people away. Don't be saucy with me Bernaise. And I do use that money largely for libations and charitable donations. Yeah, that's how we living in you know, can't touch this. Moving to your point number two, the taxation of gold and Rob Burgers video number 22 on how to buy gold. I did listen to that, but I didn't watch it closely. Some of the things he said seem to be correct to me and some of them did not seem to be correct to me. But I have two good articles to add to the show notes. One about the main ETFs and how they are taxed, whether they're using futures physical gold or something else. And another one about a Canadian trust, a Sprott trust ticker symbol P-H-Y-S. that is structured to allow taxation under normal capital gains rules. And I know Rob didn't talk about that, but I will link to that in the show notes because that would be of interest to people in very high tax brackets. So yes, it is true that many of the ETFs that invest in gold, like GLDM, are taxed under those collectible rules, which are complicated and every time I try to explain them orally, I get them wrong.

Mostly Voices [6:54]

Wrong, wrong.

Mostly Uncle Frank [6:58]

But basically what it ends up being is they are taxed at your ordinary marginal tax rate with a cap of 28% is the way it all works out after you sort out all the rules for it. Now as for these gold ETFs backed by futures, it really depends on how the ETF is structured. A lot of those are structured as partnerships and issue K-1 forms. which are a real pain in the butt for tax purposes. But you basically have to fill out that partnership return and carry those things in all those boxes into where they go, which may or may not be advantageous to you, taxation wise, in any particular year. Because, I mean, it's basically a pass through entity. Now, if you're trading futures or options on futures on your own, That may qualify as what is known as a 1256 contract. And those have interesting rules for taxation. Instead of actually looking at whether something was in fact a long-term transaction or a short-term transaction, they just take all of the transactions and say 60% of your gain is long-term and 40% is short-term. And that's an arbitrary rule that just applies to those kind of contracts. that usually does not carry forward through an ETF. One other thing you should be aware of that some of the ETFs like GLDM also will have tiny little transactions over time to cover their fees, which interestingly enough appear on some of my 1099s but not on other ones. They do not appear on my Interactive Brokers 1099. They do appear on my Fidelity. 1099s involving GLDM, but they're more of a nuisance than anything else. We're talking a few cents of gain or loss, which is maybe why interactive brokers deans not to report them as de minimis. Anyway, the bottom line on this is that it depends a lot on what your personal tax bracket is, and the higher it is, the more you should be sensitive to where you have your gold and what form you hold it in.

Mostly Voices [9:18]

I love gold so much that I even lost my genitalia in an unfortunate schmelting accident. Hence the name Goldmember.

Mostly Uncle Frank [9:30]

Two solutions for that would be to hold it in a traditional IRA if you have extra room in one of those. or to use this alternative ETF, PHYS, and follow the detailed and Byzantine instructions they give on their website. And I'll link to this article so that you can qualify for ordinary capital gains tax treatment. That may not be worth the effort for most people. I have found that I do not have lots of transactions in gold. 'Cause it's just not that large of a part of a portfolio, and I'm just not making that many transactions that would cause large tax bills anyway. But it is something to be aware of. I do strongly recommend though that you hold your gold in ETF form and do not mess around with physical holdings of metals. Good about it. I view physical metals as a kind of racket, like some annuities and insurance products.

Mostly Voices [10:36]

A guy don't walk on the lot lest he wants to buy.

Mostly Uncle Frank [10:40]

The reason they are touted so much by newsletters and people who email you things is that there's a lot of money to be made both in the storage and in the commissions and spreads that dealers get on those sorts of things.

Mostly Voices [10:59]

'Cause we're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anybody want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives.

Mostly Uncle Frank [11:11]

If you're going to hold gold in a portfolio, you really want to hold it in a form like an ETF so you can easily rebalance it with the other assets in your portfolio when you want to. You don't want to be digging around in your basement or a safe deposit box. and shipping this stuff here and there whenever you're trying to rebalance your portfolio. That is not how professionals and hedge funds invest in gold. They use ETFs and so should you.

Mostly Voices [11:42]

Do you think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys? Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [11:46]

If you're buying physical gold, I would do it for entertainment purposes only.

Mostly Voices [11:51]

And that's the way, -huh -huh, I like it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [11:55]

Anyway, this is always a confusing topic on a podcast or anything like this, and you really do need to read the materials to understand it, which is why I'm linking those two articles, which I think explain things in a much more organized manner than I just did.

Mostly Voices [12:13]

You need somebody watching your back at all times!

Mostly Uncle Frank [12:17]

Moving to your point number three, what about silver? Should you hold silver as well as gold? Gold! Gold and silver! Well, this is something I did hold and looked at extensively back about 10 years ago, I would say. And it sounds like a good idea in theory, but it just doesn't work very well. And I had been scratching my head as to why it doesn't work very well for several years. And the best explanation I've heard is that gold trades like a currency, but silver trades like a commodity. And so there is a different set of actors working in the gold market that includes things like large central banks who use gold as a backstop for their currencies and financial systems that do not exist in the silver arena, which is much smaller and also involves industrial users of it. What that tends to mean is that silver is more volatile and also that its pricing tends to follow economic cycles, not as closely as an industrial metal like copper, but certainly much more than gold does. What this generally means is that silver is more volatile and less diversified from your other assets than holding gold is. So if you're thinking of all your assets on a team, gold is just the better player in that position. And silver can't do anything that gold can't do. And since gold does that job better, you can just stick with gold and not bother with the silver. You had only one job. You will get some exposure to it anyway if you're invested in, say, a commodities fund or a managed futures fund. It does trend pretty strongly when it trends. If you do choose to use it, yes, I would also use an ETF. Silver actually has a lot of fond memories for me growing up because this was the 1970s and me and another friend of mine did collect silver coins and were part of that bubble when silver went from just a few dollars an ounce to $50 an ounce at the end of the 1970s. You have a gambling problem. It was my first experience with acid bubbles, but you would collect them in rolls, the coins, and then they would be priced based on how many times spot they were. So you would say 10 times spot would be a quarter, a silver quarter was worth $2.50 at that rate. It was fun while it lasted and it was a good learning experience, but I wouldn't recommend it. recommend it as a basis for serious investing. Well, you have a gambling problem. I remember once we won some money playing bingo, like about a hundred dollars at the church, and then went out and bought some silver coins with it. Cool. And they went up substantially in the next year or so.

Mostly Voices [15:23]

Fire, fire, fire, fire.

Mostly Uncle Frank [15:27]

It was quite fun. Couldn't use a phone then or any newfangled technologies to do that then.

Mostly Voices [15:35]

We didn't have this technology. Yeah, look at these itty bitty microphones. I hate them.

Mostly Uncle Frank [15:42]

But that's the way it was and we liked it.

Mostly Voices [15:46]

Nowadays everything's got to be better and safer. In my day we didn't have these fancy seat belts that would restrain you if your car crashed. In my day, if you stopped suddenly, you knew exactly where you were going, straight through the windshield. That was it, end of story, pull the curtain, close the shutters, good night, you were dead and you liked it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:12]

Anyway, that's enough of a trip down memory lane.

Mostly Voices [16:16]

Today, everybody's spoiled rotten. When I was a boy, we didn't have these video games. We made up our own games, like chew the bark off the tree. You and your friends would find a nice oak tree and you'd start chewing the skin off of it. And there were no winners. Everybody was a loser. It rotted your teeth and left your intestines scarred and knotted. And that's the way it was, and we liked it. We loved it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:46]

Thank you for your interesting questions, your support, and your email.

Mostly Voices [16:54]

Second off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:57]

Second off, we have an email from Jeff, our favorite dog trainer.

Mostly Voices [17:02]

I like to thank Hubert for walking in the woods before I show him because it's more natural kind of environment. and it makes him relax and makes me relax too to not think about the competition, just take a walk and smell the ground and all that. And Jeff writes, hello Frank.

Mostly Mary [17:31]

Well, I've managed to feel comfortable with a portfolio going forward and the transfers are finally finished from Empower to Fidelity. The transfer process took a couple of weeks to get completed. The portfolio I have decided on is 25% VTI, 25% VBR, 25% VG L T, 15% GLDM, 5% PDBC, 5% Money Market. Now, my problem is the market is dropping and power has me in such a complicated portfolio including about 100 individual stocks and ETFs, that it's hard to understand and classify everything. Shirley, you can't be serious.

Mostly Voices [18:11]

I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.

Mostly Mary [18:15]

Honestly, I feel like my risk parity portfolio has as good a chance of coming back as this monstrosity, a complicated 70-20-10 stock-bond alternatives I currently hold going forward, but I fear I'm doing the wrong thing by moving out while the market is down. I plan to start taking about 2% of my portfolio next year in a 72t, but honestly, I can use some cash and hold off until 2025 to begin the 72t so that that could buy me some time. It would probably be a few more years until I up my withdrawal rate. Migrating the portfolio now would save me a bunch of grief if we have a real market crash, and I think that might be a bigger concern for me. In the process of writing this email, I summarized my current portfolio the best I could, Although I know it's not exactly right because of the complexity and analyzed it in portfolio charts. Its average return is 6.3 with a standard deviation of 12.8 and withdrawal rates over 40 years of 4.6% safe and 4.1% permanent. The Risk Parity Portfolio I'm moving to has average returns of 6.7 and standard deviation of 9.6 and withdrawal rates over 40 years of 6.1 safe and 5.6% permanent. So it really seems to be a no-brainer to me, but what am I missing? Now, if they had me in a portfolio that was actually performing like an 80/20 with higher returns, I guess I should consider waiting. But with this information, I can't see the point. And just think, I was paying these people a bunch of money to build this inferior portfolio for me. That's not an improvement. That effectively knocked my withdrawal rates down about 1%, so below 4%. What's your opinion, Frank? What am I missing? Thanks a bunch, Jeff.

Mostly Voices [20:09]

And Hubert used to be able to make the sound, and he wasn't talking, but he used to go, that sounded like macadamia nut. Pine nut, which is a nut, but it's also the name of the town. Pistachio nut, red pistachio nut, natural, all natural. White, pistachio nut. Ah, yes, the Empower complicated portfolio.

Mostly Uncle Frank [20:41]

This used to be personal capital before Empower bought them. And their business model was to put out this calculator or tracker or set of things for your portfolio, get you on their list and then sell you their investment services. Because I think that really could be the ticket for you. And yes, their portfolios tended to be overly complex and involved a lot of individual stocks and other things. Basically, it was kind of a form of direct indexing. One thing you may find amusing, one of my other listeners, Nick, who is an arborist in the northern tier of this country, the best Jerry, the best. had constructed a fairly detailed, complex portfolio based on the risk parity ultimate model and personal capital slash empower approached him. He showed it to them and they said, it doesn't look like you need our help, which I thought was really funny. Bow to your sensei.

Mostly Voices [21:46]

Bow to your sensei.

Mostly Uncle Frank [21:50]

Because, yeah, they are trying to do Similar things to what we're trying to do here, but it's in a very overly complicated and disorganized manner in my view. Forget about it. Because it seems like they take a bottom up approach where they're like picking this asset, then picking this other asset, then picking this other asset, and kind of slapping them together that way. When what you really want to do is do this from the top down where first you pick your asset classes and then subclasses and then only after that do you go around figuring out, well, which fund fits this class and fits in this position. Because otherwise you do end up with the kind of mess that they end up with, which I think is, you know, part of their whole shtick making things look more complicated. to make it looks like they're doing much more work than they're actually doing.

Mostly Voices [22:48]

Put that coffee down. Coffee's for closers only. A lot of it is wheel spinning, in my view.

Mostly Uncle Frank [22:59]

What you really want to do or need to do with that kind of a thing is sort of sort out all of the components and the equities in particular put them in there. factor places, whether they are large, small, or mid size wise, and then whether they are value or growth, because that gives you an idea of then what your whole makeup of these portfolios is. If you can sort the equity part out that way, that would help. The rest of it is probably less complicated. Now, as for making the transition, I mean, it's really hard for me to know without knowing the specifics of where you're starting with this. But there are a couple of ways to do it. One, you can just do it and be satisfied that where you're going to be or end up is where you want to be. The other way is to use the macro allocation principle when making the shift. And the way you would do that is instead of going directly to the portfolio you propose to end up in, you go towards a portfolio that has the same macro allocations as the one you're currently holding, even if it's more simplified. So if this portfolio you're moving from is 70/20/10, and let's assume that the 70 is divided equally into value and growth stocks, you would first move that 70 over to your Vti and VBR, your chosen stock assets. So that would be 35% each in those. Your 20 is your bond. So you would move that over to your chosen bond fund, which is VGLT in this case. And then the 10% you would divide into the other things, the alternatives that would give you a similar risk profile just for making the move there. And then when you wanted to ultimately move to what you have come up with as the portfolio you want to hold permanently, you would either have to wait and do that later at some point or do it in some organized manner. That's where I'd really need to see the specifics of what you're dealing with. Or you could say, well, no, I have enough money saved and I'm comfortable with this portfolio. Let's just move straight to it. Now, in terms of what you're moving to, it looks pretty solid somewhere between a golden butterfly and a golden ratio kind of portfolio. I would probably, instead of the PDVC commodities fund, use a managed futures fund in that position for that 5%, simply because the funds we have now in that category are going to track those commodities but are going to have a better risk reward profile overall and probably a little bit better diversification properties with the stocks. So you might use something like DBMF or KMLM for something like that. In our personal portfolios we have been transitioning out of these straight commodities related funds into more managed futures funds. It's like the silver and the gold. I think the managed futures fund It's just a better player in that position than a straight commodities fund is. But truth be told, it probably won't matter all that much because we're only talking about a 5% allocation anyway. And so, as to your last comment, what are you missing? You're really not missing anything here. I think, you know, personal capital slash Empower has the right idea in terms of, yes, we need more diversification to have a better portfolio in terms of risk reward. It's just the implementation of it, the way they do it, is not very optimized unless you are trying to make a complicated portfolio to convince a client you're doing lots of stuff. Always be closing. Be much better off looking more at the macro allocations and the diversification amongst those than fiddling around with all of these individual stocks. Loading up the cart with more things often does not improve diversification and can just make the whole thing worse. It violates the simplicity principle. But other common purveyors have had these kind of problems too. One of those is Wealthfront, who came up with a risk parity style portfolio that really wasn't a very good risk parity style portfolio. It has done terribly. But I think all this goes to show you is that while this stuff is complicated, it's not rocket science and we do have the tools to do it ourselves as do-it-yourself investors, just using ETFs and not getting too far into the weeds with dozens of different holdings. But I'm glad you've been able to make a lot of good use of the information you've found here and have come up with your own solution. 'Cause I don't view my role here as to tell people what to do, but to give them the ideas and tools so they can make the best decisions for themselves. That is the essence of do-it-yourself investing.

Mostly Voices [28:21]

And then what they create, they give it away rather than sell it. It's going to be huge.

Mostly Uncle Frank [28:29]

And so thank you for your very interesting email.

Mostly Voices [28:35]

Sometimes I think he's gonna talk to the judge and say, Hey, judge, hey judge, look at me. That's, I mean, he's not, the dog ain't gonna talk, but his mind is like a telepathy. The thing where he says, I want the best one here, I want the best one you ever seen. And then the judge in his mind, because he can pick up on the, the lap as they will, Sometimes give him blue ribbon. Hey, Judge. Hey, what's going on there? I know what you're thinking, and I'm the best dog in the whole ring. See? That's not a bad idea. Maybe I just should do that, practice that, right? Last off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:26]

Last off, an email from Kenny.

Mostly Mary [29:37]

Kenny! And Kenny writes, hi Frank, we can easily find fixed income now yielding five to nine percent a year. Would it be wrong for a very conservative investor to ditch stocks in favor of the tranquility fixed income provides? I'm 56 and using a 3.

Mostly Voices [30:03]

357% safe withdrawal rate anyway, so it feels like the game would be over with 100% fixed income, so why would I keep playing? Comments? Oh my God, they killed Kenny!

Mostly Uncle Frank [30:10]

Well, a short answer is yes, it probably would be a bad idea to completely ditch equity, particularly since you're only 56 and have a very much longer time to live. And the reason for that is you need something in your portfolio that is going to be growing for the next 20 years. You're most concerned about what happens after 15 to 20 years of living on fixed income. You need some growth in your portfolio. That being said, you probably don't need very much. And the reason you don't need very much is because your withdrawal rate 3.357% is very low. And with that kind of withdrawal rate, you can hold a variety of portfolios, depending on what your other goals are for legacies or other things. It sounds like you do not have a legacy goal. Therefore, having lots and lots of stocks in your portfolio is not something you would want or desire anyway. If you really wanted to just set this and forget it, I would just use the Vanguard Wellesley Fund. and even if I'm not using the Vanguard Wellesley Fund, I would think of using that as a model. That is a 35-65 stock bond mix of a portfolio. The stocks are almost entirely large cap value stocks, things like Conoco Phillips and Procter and Gamble. And I think that kind of portfolio will easily satisfy your 3.357% safe withdrawal rate. In fact, I believe right now it's throwing off about 4.7% in terms of income, which would be more than you need. Now, the problem that you actually have with something like the Vanguard Wellesley Fund or just a plain vanilla fixed income kind of portfolio is going to be taxes. Because if you're holding a lot of this stuff in a taxable account, you're going to be paying ordinary income taxes on that and that's not going to be pleasant or efficient. On the other hand, if it's in an IRA, it doesn't matter anyway as far as that's concerned. Now to ameliorate that in a taxable account, you might start looking at things like municipal bonds and also preferred shares funds for part of it because those are going to pay mostly qualified dividends that are taxed at the lower long-term capital gains tax rate, and that would be a fund like PFF, which I think is paying 7% right now, some gaudy number. It is more volatile than your average bond fund, but it's not going to really matter if you're just holding it and taking the income off of it. But I would be considering tax optimization strategies. And then when you do get up there to like age 70, you're probably going to want to be looking at simple annuities. Because when you get to that age, those kind of products are going to be paying a much larger income than you're going to be able to get out of a lot of your plain old fixed income investments. But that also depends mostly on your health and then how your Social Security pans out. So that's certainly something to wait for. I think one of the bigger mistakes we see in financial planning is driven by the desire of the financial services industry to sell people products in their 50s and 60s to supposedly turn on when they get older, which usually doesn't even happen, leaving some really nasty, crappy, taxable thing to your heir, like a variable annuity. Am I right or am I right or am I right? Right, right, right.

Mostly Voices [33:48]

When the better approach there is to just wait and invest your

Mostly Uncle Frank [33:53]

assets in a portfolio that you can liquidate or change at any time, and then go and buy one of those kind of products exactly at the time you need it, or ladder them as you get into your 70s and 80s, which is another strategy you might employ when you get there. But something like that will certainly give you the most tranquility in your dotage.

Mostly Voices [34:16]

Death stalks you at every turn. Grandpa. Well, it does.

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:26]

There it is, death! For right now, I would look at that Vanguard Wellesley Fund as a base model of what you're trying to achieve and look at the components of it in particular and then modify that idea for your tax situation. Of course, my real personal recommendation would be to spend more money and have a more aggressive portfolio. But not everybody wants to do that, and I understand that. But whatever you do, make sure you use proper tax location principles to put things in taxable traditional IRA or Roth IRA wherever they best fit. And hopefully that helps. And thank you for your email.

Mostly Voices [35:07]

We will all miss Kenny, his playful laughter, his innocent smile. So without further ado, As we commit this young child to the earth, let us all be reminded that syphilis is still a deadly disease. And now for something completely different.

Mostly Uncle Frank [35:27]

And the something completely different is our weekly portfolio reviews of the seven sample portfolios you can find at www.riskparityradio.com on the portfolios page. And there was a lot of activity in the markets last week, but it didn't end up making a whole lot of difference in terms of a diversified portfolio with some things up and some things down. Anyway, just looking at the markets there, the S&P 500 was up 1.31% for the week, the Nasdaq was up 2.37% for the week, I think was the big winner there. Small cap value represented by the fund of VIoV was actually down significantly, it was down 3.41% for the week. Gold was also down, gold was down 2.97% for the week. Long-term treasury bonds are presented by the fund VGIT were all over the map last week, but they ended up 0.29% for the week. REITs represented by the fund R E E T were also down, down 2.67% for the week. Commodities represented by the fund PDBC were down at 2. 64% for the week. That had a lot to do with the price of oil declining. Preferred shares represented by the fund PFF were down 1.53% for the week. And our managed futures fund, DBMF, the representative fund, was up 1.07% for the week. Moving to these portfolios, first one of the All Seasons, this one is a reference portfolio that is 30% in a total stock market fund, 55% in in intermediate and long-term treasury bonds, the remaining 15% in gold and commodities. It was up all of 0.04% for the week, so just about flat. It's up 1.73% year to date and down 6.46% since inception in July 2020. We did have all of the distributions come out of these portfolios last week as well. Moving to these three kind of bread and butter portfolios. First one's this golden butterfly. This one's 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. It was down 0.94% for the week, I think, because it's got a lot of gold in it. It's up 2.45% year to date and up 9.85% since inception in July 2020. Next one is the golden ratio. This one's 42% in stocks and three funds. 26% in long-term treasury bonds, 16% in gold, 10% in a reit fund, REET, and 6% in a money market fund. It was down 0.57% for the week. It's up 3.31% year to date and up 5.91% since inception in July 2020. Next one is the Risk Parity Ultimate. We'll go through all 15 of these funds. The Bitcoin in it is flying high these days, though it is the best performer. recently. So it was down last week, it was down 0.3% for the week. It's up 3.3% year to date and down 2.36% since inception July 2020. Now moving to these experimental portfolios, we run hideous experiments here so you don't have to. These all involve leveraged funds. Look away, I'm hideous. and are usually quite volatile, although not so much last week. First one is the Accelerated Permanent Portfolio. This one is 27.5% in a leveraged bond fund, TMF, 25% in a leveraged stock fund, UPRO, 25% in PFF, a preferred shares fund, and 22.5% in gold, GLDM. It was up 0.13% for the week. It's down 0.19% year to date. and down 23.95% since inception in July 2020. Still smarting from last year. Next one is the aggressive 5050. This is the least diversified and most levered fund. It's one third in a levered stock fund, UPRO, one third in a levered bond fund, TMF, and the remaining third in ballast in a preferred shares fund and a intermediate treasury bond fund. It was a big winner last week of these portfolios. It was up 1. 12% for the week, probably because it does not have any gold in it. It was down 3.05% year to date and is down 32.85% since inception in July 2020. And the last one is our levered golden ratio portfolio. This one is 35% in a composite fund called NTSX, that is the S&P 500 and treasury bonds, levered up 1.5 to 1, 25% in gold, GLDM, 15% in ERETO, 10% each in a levered stock fund, small cap fund, TNA and a levered bond fund, TMF, and the remaining 5% in a managed futures fund, KMLM. It was down 1.31% for the week. It's down 2.35% year to date and down 25.24% since inception in July 2021. And it looks worse than the others due to that inauspicious start date. And so that concludes our portfolio reviews with a move along nothing to see here reporting session. And all of that's on the website if you're interested in the details. But now I see our signal is beginning to fade. 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, put your message into the contact form and I'll get it that way. And I do see them stacking up there, as I mentioned, I'm time constrained to the next month or so and so we'll only have a limited number of shows, but we will get through them all eventually. You may also wish to check out our Sister website in crime, Risk Parity Chronicles, which is run by our listener, Justin, and I will also link to that in the show notes. Unlike me, he actually writes some of this stuff up instead of just talking into a can about it.

Mostly Voices [41:56]

We hear that you pay good money to sing into a can. Well, that all depends. But there you go. The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Mostly Uncle Frank [42:11]

If you haven't had a chance to do it, please go to your favorite podcast provider and like, subscribe, give me some stars or a review. That would be great. M'kay? Thank you once again for tuning in. This is Frank Vasquez with Risk Parity Radio signing off.

Mostly Voices [42:30]

In my day, we didn't know what to say when we were mad, so we just made up things like flibber-dee-flu. Because we were idiots and that's how it was. Just a bunch of people flying out of car windows in their burning pajamas, shouting into a melon and chewing on trees. And that's the way it was and we liked it.

Mostly Mary [42:51]

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.