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 [0:19]

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. I don't think I'd like another job. What we do have is a little free library of updated and unconflicted information for do-it-yourself investors.

Mostly Voices [1:25]

I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:28]

So please enjoy our mostly cold beer served in cans and our coffee served in old chipped and cracked mugs along with what our little free library has to offer.

Mostly Voices [1:50]

But now onward, episode 327. Today on Risk Parity Radio, it's time for the grand unveiling of money!

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:00]

Which means we'll be doing our weekly portfolio reviews of the seven sample portfolios you can find at www.riskparityradio.com on the portfolios page. And really what they did is recover from the losses in the prior week for the most part. But before we get to that, I'm intrigued by these how you say emails and first off, first off, we have an email from Andrew.

Mostly Mary [2:43]

And Andrew writes. Frank, Andrew from Reading, PA again.

Mostly Voices [2:49]

Yeah, baby, yeah!

Mostly Mary [2:53]

I found this diversified alternative strategic fund from AQR QDSIX. Looks very interesting. Has arbitrage fund, managed futures, long/short, etc.

Mostly Uncle Frank [3:04]

What do you mean? You know, like, num-chuck skills, bow hunting skills, Computer hacking skills. Looks like it's six different strategies.

Mostly Mary [3:15]

Expense ratio isn't too bad, a little over 1%, and you can buy it through the interactive brokers for no minimum. Just wondering what your thoughts are as a portion of a portfolio. Thanks, and I love the podcast and funny movie clips. Makes me smile.

Mostly Voices [3:30]

You mean, let me understand this, because I don't know, maybe it's me. But I'm funny how? I mean funny like I'm a clown.

Mostly Uncle Frank [3:45]

I amuse you? I make you laugh? What do you mean funny? Funny how? How am I funny? All right, what QDSIX is, is a fund of funds that essentially incorporates something of all of AQR's strategies. And as you mentioned, there's arbitrage, there's managed futures, there's long/short. There's basically all of the main alternative strategies that one would think of. and we have talked about AQR funds from time to time in other podcast episodes, including this particular fund. Those episodes are episode 267 for AQMIx, episode 265 for QMHNx, episode 230 we mentioned QDSIX and AQRIX, and also I think AQR in episode 133. I do use some of these sometimes as a comparison for annual performances. And I would describe these as essentially the first generation of publicly available funds that incorporate alternative strategies that aren't just hedge funds that essentially anybody could go buy. A lot of these came out between essentially 2008 and now they have changed and improved over the years. They are interesting to look at and there's a lot of really good literature about the various strategies that AQR has put out. AQR is famous for publishing lots of white papers about investing and is really on the forefront of best practices in investing at a professional level seeking to maximize diversification and the return versus risk ratios of any portfolio. And so we've also cited their papers on risk parity and all sorts of other things, including a recent critique of that Cedarberg paper, which we talked about a few episodes ago. The beatings will continue until morale improves. But anyway, in today's day and age, I don't think I would ever use one of these funds or recommend somebody use one of these funds. And for a couple of reasons. First, they have very high expense ratios. They come from that era when 2% was common. These are now down to, I think this one is 1.5% in terms of an overall expense ratio. Still, that is quite high. The next issue I have with them is that they are basically AQR's idea of a fully diversified portfolio in one fund, essentially. So it's got all these components, but there really is no way to take this thing apart. Oh, I suppose you could invest in individual funds and then do allocations to each of the particular strategies in something that you would personally want, as opposed to something that they've just put together. So by trying to be too comprehensive, they basically created something that isn't all that useful. it's much more useful to have sort of raw ingredient funds that are just one thing and one thing only, and then be able to mix them and match them the way you want to do it, and not the way it just happens to be presented to you. So I prefer to use more modern ETFs that are just specifically one kind of investment or strategy and nothing else. The third problem is there's really no way to model performance of this thing in these strategies, because for most of these strategies, there is not enough data to do any kind of analysis and know what kind of safe withdrawal rate this would have or anything else. So it could be exceptionally good, or it could be exceptionally bad, and there isn't really any way to determine it other than kind of guessing at it, which is just not good enough for what we're trying to do here, which is to create low-cost, easy to manage, diversified portfolios that we can hopefully draw the most money out of in a retirement scenario. So I look at these things as kind of benchmarks or possibilities or examples of portfolios and not as something that you would actively want to try to invest in. What they are really designed for is somebody with a family office or institutions who wants to delegated a certain percentage of a gigantic portfolio to alternative strategies broadly, and therefore they would buy something like this. And that's who it's really marketed to for the most part. Since we've now had this ETF revolution, these kinds of funds I think are going obsolete or will be obsolete and that if people are going to create things new for diversification purposes, they're going to look more like what you see at Simplify or what Corey Hoffstein is doing with these return stacked ETFs and not like this conglomeration put into a mutual fund with a high fee. And so for all those reasons, I would not use one of these funds, even though I do appreciate that they are interesting, they are diversified, and they incorporate lots of interesting strategies. I'd rather see those strategies presented separately as low-cost ETFs and not in some kind of conglomeration like this. And I keep wondering if AQR is going to break down and have to do that as DFA has had to do that as many other mutual fund providers with sophisticated strategies have had to move to the world of ETFs because that is the best practice in the 2020s. It's no longer these kind of conglomerate alternative asset strategy funds. So we shall see. You're not going to amount to jack squat. Interesting topic and thank you for your email.

Mostly Voices [10:02]

Second off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [10:06]

Second off, we have an email from Sean. Do you expect me to talk?

Mostly Voices [10:10]

No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.

Mostly Uncle Frank [10:15]

And Sean writes, hi, Frank.

Mostly Mary [10:19]

First off, I discovered your podcast a couple of weeks ago from an old Choose FI podcast. I've since been binge listening from episode one and am currently up to episode 154. Oh behave. Yeah. Yeah, baby. I will say I appreciate your relaxed speaking cadence as I'm able to listen at one and a half times speed, which makes some of the sound drops pretty interesting. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. Between that and skipping most of the early portfolio reviews, I've been able to plow through them pretty quickly. But having my backward facing crystal ball, I will say I have been looking forward to getting to the mid-late 2022 episodes as long-term treasuries and US equities were simultaneously getting crushed to see how these portfolios held up. I'm up to February 2022 now, so it's coming. Second off, I'm 51 and my retirement accounts are close to my cost to fire number. and based on the Monte Carlo financial goals simulations at Portfolio Visualizer, I should be in good shape from 59 and a half on. I've already begun to slowly increase allocations to long-term Treasuries, gold and REITs, and will transition over the next few years to a risk parity style portfolio. After several years of stuffing these retirement accounts as much as possible, I'm dialing that back a little and I'm now focused on building up after-tax accounts to cover for me in those years from 55 to as I'd like to retire at 55. I know you've talked about risk parity style portfolios to save for short-term goals, but this seems a little different in that I'll need a portfolio I can withdraw from over time, but only for five years or so, which leaves little time for recovery from any significant drawdowns. Conventional wisdom would be to just go with a conservative cash short-term treasuries type of portfolio. maybe some CD and/or bond ladders, but is there a place for a risk parity style portfolio in this scenario? Apologies if you've already addressed this topic sometime between March 2022 and today. Feel free to just point me to the right episode if so. Thanks, Sean.

Mostly Uncle Frank [12:51]

Well, thank you for becoming a new listener, Sean. I hope you can put up with the insanity around here.

Mostly Voices [13:09]

Starting at the top here with my cadence of speech.

Mostly Uncle Frank [13:13]

Yes, a lot of that is actually learned because for a lot of my legal career, I've worked through translators or with arbitrators that did not have English as their first language. And what you learn very quickly is that in order to communicate in those circumstances, it is best to speak very slowly. That is strength, boy. That is power. And the same is true when you're in front of judges of a certain age. They also appreciate a slow cadence and enough volume to suit them. So these are learned habits over the course of several decades that do also lend themselves to podcasting, I think, especially since you can speed it up.

Mostly Voices [14:11]

BOW TO YOUR SENSEI! BOW TO YOUR SENSEI!

Mostly Uncle Frank [14:19]

I also listen to all of my podcasts on 1.5x speed unless there's a fast talker involved simply because you can get through a whole lot more of them that way. I know many people actually listen to this on 2x. But you should hear what it's like sometime before I take out all the pauses in the editing process. Now to your main question here. Yeah, this is an interesting and common situation. where somebody needs to fill some kind of gap, if you will, that is only a few years long, either before they take Social Security or get a pension, or something else is going to get turned on, if you will. And I actually just mentioned this at the Economy Conference that we just got back from at the Breakout Session. But the best solution generally for something like this is in fact a CD or bond ladder. And that's because the time frame is short and it has a definite end. And that is where these kind of ladders really work well. Because the idea behind a bond ladder or CD ladder is you are actually spending all of that money as it comes off, both the principal and whatever you earned on it. And so you know exactly how much that is going to be. Assumably it's matched up with some kind of expenses, that will later be filled by some other or covered by some other source. And since you're talking about basically a three and a half to four year window, that is the perfect kind of thing to be using a CD or bond ladder for. I would just make sure that you do not overfund it, because on the other side of this coin, I see bond ladders and CD ladders vastly overused and misused. by many people, because oftentimes people gravitate to these things because they think it sounds cool or sophisticated, or they think they're actually doing something meaningful. In most cases it's a form of financial masturbation, at least the kinds of things that I see.

Mostly Voices [16:44]

No no, no no, no, not yen. No, no, no, no, no not yes. No, no yes.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:56]

No, no, So this is a good point where we can invert this question, when should we not be using a bond ladder or a CD ladder? One of the reasons you should not be using a bond ladder or a CD ladder is if your time period is open. If you do not know when this time period is going to end and you are trying to use it, for instance, until the rest of your life, you don't know when you're going to die, Therefore, you have to guess at that. Therefore, you're probably going to be wrong and it's going to be an inefficient use of those resources, which would be better put into some kind of portfolio or if you are really worried about longevity risk per se, then it goes to an annuity. But don't buy that until you're older and only buy the simplest ones. What is another bad use of a bond ladder or circumstance that makes a bad use of a bond ladder? It's when you're actually not using the money. If your idea is you're going to hold this thing and then re-roll it or recreate it all the time by simply taking the money that comes off and reinvesting it back at the top of the ladder and you're rolling this thing over and over again, you're probably just wasting your time. You can just buy a fund that does that. You don't need to be engaged in all these machinations.

Mostly Voices [18:18]

No, no, no, no, no, no yes, no, not no, no, no no No, no, no, no, no, no, no Or pretending you're actually doing something meaningful there because you're not, justst go buy the short term bond fund and be done with it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [18:41]

And finally, the other bad use of these is within a portfolio of other assets. And the reason that's a bad use of a bond ladder is because trying to rebalance these things against other assets is a ridiculous process, is very complicated, involves a lot of transactions, generally with individual bonds and things like that. and really becomes quite messy. Again, if you are using bonds in a portfolio as a diversifier or something like that, then you are better off with the bond fund that you can buy and sell on a liquid open market and not have to be fiddling around with all of these things of different durations that are changing every year. And as for the final question that we always get about this, well, isn't it much different because you're getting all your money back and Bond funds go up and down and it feels different and I think it's different and I'm telling stories to myself. The answer is yeah, you're just telling stories to yourself. It's an illusion that these things are different. That's not how it works.

Mostly Voices [19:46]

That's not how any of this works.

Mostly Uncle Frank [19:50]

I will post to you again a nice article from Ben Carlson which goes through this and explains it that if you are essentially buying the same bonds in a fund or a ladder, It is the same investment. It may feel different, but overall, when all is said and done, it's the same investment. And your preferences, therefore, are based on feelings and not on math or data or good portfolio construction techniques. Forget about it. But enough on that mini rant. You're too stupid to have a good time. For you and your purpose, a bond ladder would be a perfect solution. You could also look at CDs. You can also look at MYGAs, those are insurance products that effectively perform like CDs. I'm not sure it's worthwhile in your circumstance to be running off looking at those things. But people like Larry Swedroe do swear by them and have recommended them in the past. And so I would be remiss for not mentioning them as a possibility. There are many good options for this these days. And finally, you referenced some of my discussions about using a risk parity style portfolio to save for short-term goals. And that is really for somebody Frank Vasquez：who is saving for a car or a down payment for a house, and they do not have a fixed date on it, but they are actually just putting money into this thing. And this is what my 20-somethings do. A risk parity style portfolio is a good portfolio to hold for those kind of intermediate goals, if you will, because these portfolios tend to have a maximum drawdown in terms of time of three years or less. So what our 20-somethings do is have an emergency fund, straight cash, etc. Then they also have their retirement assets, 401 s, etc. And those are in basic index funds. No target date funds. Do not do that. Not going to do it.

Mostly Voices [22:16]

Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture.

Mostly Uncle Frank [22:20]

Don't let your children grow up to be cowboys or invest in target date funds.

Mostly Voices [22:24]

No more flying solo. You need somebody watching your back at all times.

Mostly Uncle Frank [22:32]

But in between that, and in particular, money that they are saving but do not have a specific use for but know that they probably will use more of in the future, that flows over, if you will, out of the excess from the emergency fund kind of savings into risk parity style portfolios where it sits there and grows but is then accessible whenever there is a sort of big purchase or big use case that appears and they have the money sort of there ready to go. So for anyone who hasn't heard that discussion, that is what Sean was talking about and what I had talked about in prior episodes. It is not really an application for what you are doing now as you're cruising into retirement and you need more specific money in specific time frames, which is why a bond ladder in this circumstance makes more sense. Anyway, very good question and hopefully this helps. And thank you for your email.

Mostly Voices [23:36]

Such a cold finger. beckons you to enter his web of sin. But don't go in. Last off. Last off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [24:01]

An email from my contact info.

Mostly Voices [24:05]

Oh, I didn't know you were doing one. Oh sure.

Mostly Uncle Frank [24:09]

It's been a little while.

Mostly Mary [24:13]

I think I've improved on your methods a bit too. And my contact info writes.

Mostly Uncle Frank [24:16]

I was reading this interesting article about the shrinking global population

Mostly Mary [24:21]

and I was wondering what will be its impact in our investments and markets overall and if there's anything we can do to shield our portfolios. I think what happens in Japan illustrates what can happen in the global markets or not? Thoughts? Attack speed. Attack speed.

Mostly Uncle Frank [24:45]

Ramming speed. Ramming speed. All right, this is a Bloomberg article by Neil Ferguson that you are citing to. Let's talk about Neil Ferguson first, and then we'll talk about the article. Neil Ferguson is a well-known kind of economic historian kind of person who talks a lot about global trends and macro things and all that sort of stuff. He's very well educated, he's very well spoken, he's written a number of interesting books, but when it comes down to predicting anything he's terrible at it. He's a very good example of what Philip Tetlock was writing about in Superforecasters that most of these kind of experts, particularly when they are what he calls hedgehogs, they have kind of a set of ideas that they believe to be true and are constantly promoting them tend to be terrible about forecasting anything in the future. So whenever I see something by Neil Ferguson, it's sort of like, well, that's interesting. Fortunately, he did not try to really predict anything in this article. because he's really not good at that. A very high noise to signal ratio. Now turning to the article itself, this looks like it's kind of warmed over stuff that we've been reading for at least the past decade. And what it's saying is that the world population is now destined to peak at around 10 billion people later this century and then decline after that. And various countries will have various different experiences depending on their fertility rates. I remember reading a lot about this in a book called Shock of Gray, which was written in 2005 by a guy named Ted Fishman, which was very interesting analysis of how this aging of populations without replacement was changing how societies worked and went over various different countries and how they were coping with it. What's also interesting about this problem is if you look at the history of population forecasting, you can see just how wrong all of these experts have been over decades of time. Because as Ferguson points out in this article, if you go back to the 1960s, everybody was worried about overpopulation and go watch a movie like Soylent Green, where there are 25 million people stuffed into Manhattan and everybody's living in poverty and living on manufactured food products made out of algae and people and other things. Listen to me, Hatcher.

Mostly Voices [27:31]

You gotta tell 'em Silent Green is people!

Mostly Uncle Frank [27:35]

And that was supposed to be the future in our time. That movie was made in 1973 and I think it was set in 2017.

Mostly Voices [27:45]

Silent green is made of the people. It's people.

Mostly Uncle Frank [27:55]

So all of those people who were making those overpopulation predictions then were wrong. Wrong. And now in the past 20 years, people have only woken up and say, hey, it's actually going the other way. And now it seems like people are Now inventing a whole other series of potential calamities due to declining population. Real wrath of God type stuff.

Mostly Voices [28:19]

I just don't think it's gonna be that bad. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies.

Mostly Uncle Frank [28:27]

But you do mention Japan here, and I think that was, that's interesting because this is also one of the countries that was modeled in this shock of gray book that I was just telling you about. And the real problem Japan has with this issue is that they do not import people. They do not have a very large immigration. So countries like the United States, which have a history of immigration, can easily just import more people from places that are producing more people, if you will. And economically that will solve the problem. So it's really not much of a problem in that circumstance. And even countries like Spain, in that book illustrated that there were many, many people coming from Latin America, countries like Ecuador, who would go to Spain because it was easy to find work there, particularly if you're caring for older people. And that was also a solution. They were living there forever. They planned to go back to Ecuador. But the world is a lot more mobile than people think sometimes. And the idea that every country is just some kind of a silo, is not well supported. So how will this affect investments and the economy? Generally, aging and declining populations tend to be deflationary. And so one of the reasons people go back and when they analyze the 1970s and look at how inflationary it was, you had the opposite thing going on. You had all of these baby boomers who were born in the '50s and '60s coming into the workforce and growing families and buying houses and doing all these things. And that's a very inflationary thing. If you think of the opposite not having that, then obviously that is a deflationary force moving through society. And people point to Japan as one of the reasons that it's had its deflation for as long as it has has to do with this demographic aging. But that's another interesting thing that just because your GDP overall is declining does not mean that the GDP per capita or basically how an average person is living is getting any worse. Because if you have fewer people, you could have a higher GDP per capita. People could be living better even though the overall GDP of the country has gone down. And that's just math, math that people somehow forget about when they start talking about this. So to the extent you're worried about inflation, This process, lower populations or lower population growth pushes back the other way on inflation. Does that mean things are going to turn out all right? Well, maybe, maybe not, but I can't see any reason to think that they wouldn't or couldn't. Honestly, I think the best source or book to read on this is called Factfulness by the late Hans Rosling. who looked at these kinds of issues worldwide and essentially the question of is the world getting better or worse? And it was obvious from all of the data he collected that overall the world has been getting better for more people in more places over the past 30 years. His point was that that reality was contrary to a lot of beliefs of a lot of people. But that just tells you that people are filling their heads full of sensational news and stories about calamities. Rivers and seas boiling! 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave! As opposed to looking at the ordinary unsexy data, which just shows things are generally improving in most places for most people. I'll link to a nice video summary of that in the show notes. One of the things he talked about was this population issue that instead of having a pyramid of population, our demographics are more likely to look kind of like a tower with the same number of people being born as dying. But in most places that has actually resulted in better individual outcomes for the people living in those societies who have more access to things like education and clean water and all the other things that we would want to have. So his perspective is, yes, things will be different, but that does not mean they're going to be worse. And in fact, there's a good possibility they're going to be better. Yes! So I honestly see this development of population topping out in an S-curve and then declining as a solution to an old problem that people previously thought could not be solved. But instead of recognizing it for that, people would rather sensationalize about it and make up a list of potential new problems that depopulation might cause.

Mostly Voices [33:28]

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria.

Mostly Uncle Frank [33:32]

As the article mentioned, you know, through most of the 20th century, the population of the world was, you know, somewhere between one and three billion. Now it's up near 10 or will top out around 10. So if it goes back down to three billion for some reason, it will still be higher than it's been for almost all of recorded history. That's the fact, Jack. That's the fact, Jack. So the idea that population might level out somewhere between five and ten billion in the next century poses absolutely no threat at all unless you're completely myopic and do not appreciate that for almost all of human history there were far fewer people on the planet and that did not cause any problems not having enough people. The only issue there was technologically we just did not advance very quickly. Now what I really want you all to do now is go to your podcast provider, and subscribe to the BBC podcasts. In particular, they have one every week called the Happy Pod, which is just all about positive stories of things going on around the world. And I think is actually more reflective of life for people in developed countries, or most people in developed countries, than all of the sturm and drang that we hear on the Ordinary news cycles. Now I just need to reincarnate myself as Hans Rosling, who has always been one of my favorites. Anyway, hope you enjoyed those musings and thank you for your email. Now we are going to do something extremely fun. And the extremely fun thing we get to do now is our weekly portfolio reviews of the seven sample portfolios you can find at www.riskparityradio.com on the portfolios page. What can I say? It was almost all wine and roses. Just looking at the markets, the S&P 500 was up 2.29% for the week. The Nasdaq was up 2.85% for the week. Small cap value represented by the fund VIoV was up 1.2% for the week. Gold was up. Gold was up 0.33% for the week. It hit an all-time high above $2,200 an ounce and then pulled back a bit. I love gold.

Mostly Voices [36:12]

Long-term treasury bonds represented by the fund VGLT were

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:16]

up 1.17% for the week. and have really gone nowhere since the beginning of the year. REITs represented by the fund REET were down 0.09% for the week. Commodities represented by the fund PDBC were down 0.29% for the week. Preferred shares represented by the fund PFF were up exactly 1% this week. And managed futures represented by the fund DBMF were up 2.38% for the week. So we're also one of the big winners. Looking at these portfolios, first one's this reference portfolio, the All Seasons. It's only 30% in stocks in a total stock market fund, 55% in intermediate and long-term treasury bonds, and 15% in gold and commodities. It was up 1.17% for the week. It's up 1.96% year to date and up 3.51% since inception in July 2020. Next one's Golden Butterfly. This one 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, GLDM. It was up 0.98% for the week. It's up 1.67% year to date and up 22.53% since inception in July 2020. Next one is the Golden Ratio Portfolio. This one is 42% in stocks. We've got it in three funds：a large cap growth, a small cap value, and a low volatility fund. 26% in long-term treasury bonds, 16% in gold, 10% in a rate fund, and 6% in a money market. or cash. It was also up 0.98% for the week. It's up 1.82% year to date and up 19.17% since inception in July 2020. I should note that Tyler over at Portfolio Charts has recently updated his safe withdrawal rate calculator and the other calculators that use those calculations to not only have a safe withdrawal rate, any perpetual withdrawal rate, but also what he calls a long-term withdrawal rate, which is kind of between the two of those. You might want to check that out. If you do go and look at the comparisons of the portfolios on the portfolio matrix or risk and return calculators, you will find that the risk parity style portfolios do fare the best out of all the 20 or 19 portfolios they analyze there, which include everything from the 6040, the Boglehead 3 fund, a Merriman Ultimate, a Swenson Portfolio, a Schwab Ro thing, a Rick Ferri Core 4, all of those things perform worse than the portfolios we talk about here when you're talking about safe withdrawal rates and perpetual withdrawal rates. And if you want to input a version of a golden ratio portfolio, which actually turns out to be the best one under the new calculation Machine there. The best Jerry, the best. Put in 21% large cab growth, 21% small cab value, 26% long term treasuries, 16% gold, 10% REITs and 6% in T-bills. And you can compare that with the rest of the 19 portfolios there. I will also link to his article about withdrawal rates, which is very interesting academic reading, I think. Anyway, getting back to these portfolios, next one's the Risk Parity Ultimate, kind of our kitchen sink portfolio that has about 15 funds in it, including a little Bitcoin and Ether, which actually went down the past week. I think we'll get to sell some of that Bitcoin for our distribution in another week or so. So this one was up 0.75% for the week. It's up 4.45% year to date and up 12.18% since inception in July 2020. Now moving to these experimental portfolios we have next.

Mostly Voices [40:28]

Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave with a box of scraps.

Mostly Uncle Frank [40:36]

These are the ones that involve leveraged funds and they're highly volatile. They don't try this at home variety.

Mostly Voices [40:47]

Well, you have a gambling problem.

Mostly Uncle Frank [40:51]

The first one is the Accelerated Permanent Portfolio. This one is 27.5% in a levered bond fund, TMF, 25% in a levered stock fund, UPRO, 25% in a preferred shares fund, PFF, and 22.5% in gold. It's up 2.92% for the week. It's up 4.22% year to date. and down 4.49% since inception in July 2020. Next one's the aggressive 5050. This is the least diversified and most levered of these portfolios. It's one-third in a levered stock fund, UPRO, one-third in a levered bond fund, TMF, and the remaining third in ballast divided into a preferred shares fund and a intermediate treasury bond fund. It was up 3.23% for the week. it's up 4.52% year to date, down 14.29% since inception in July 2020. And looking at this last one, the levered golden ratio, which has been around a year less than the other six, this one is 35% in a composite levered fund called NTSX that is essentially a 90-60 portfolio of The S&P 500 and Treasury bonds. Then it's got 25% in gold, GLDM, 15% in the REIT, O, 10% each in a levered small cap fund, TNA, and a levered bond fund, TMF, and the remaining 5% in a managed futures fund, KMLM. It was up 1.69% for the week. It's up 1.46% year to date and down 12.19% since inception in July 2021. It had much more inauspicious timing for a start date than the others, but does represent a kind of worst case scenario in terms of start dates in the latter half of 2021. But anyway, that wraps all of that up. Move along, nothing to see here.

Mostly Voices [42:55]

You know, I don't mean to embarrass you, but I'm a rather brilliant surgeon. Perhaps I could help you with that hump. What hump?

Mostly Uncle Frank [43:06]

And now I see our signal is beginning to fade. If you have comments or questions for me, please send them to frank@riskparityradio.com, then email us 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. 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, a follow. That would be great. Mmmkay? Thank you once again for tuning in. This is Frank Vasquez from Risk Parity Radio signing off. Very good, that'll be all.

Mostly Voices [43:47]

Quick time, hooray! I love quick time, Harch.

Mostly Mary [44:00]

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.