Voices [0:00]

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

Mostly Queen 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.

Voices [0:52]

Expect the unexpected.

Mostly Uncle Frank [0:54]

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.

Voices [1:10]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:13]

What we do have is a little free library of updated and unconflicted information for do-it-yourself investors.

Voices [1:23]

Now who's up for a trip to the library tomorrow?

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:27]

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. Today on Risk Party Radio.

Voices [1:56]

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 eight sample portfolios you can find at www.riskparty radio.com on the portfolios page. And it's turning out to be a banner year for those portfolios already.

Voices [2:14]

That is the straight stuff, oh funkmaster.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:18]

Not so much in the regular things people invest in, but all the other ones. So gold is up a lot.

Voices [2:24]

I love gold.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:28]

Commodities are doing well. Small cap value is doing well.

Voices [2:37]

I gotta have more cowbells. I gotta have more cowbells.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:41]

But you'll see the results or hear the results when we get to them. But before we get to that.

Voices [2:49]

I'm intrigued by this. How are you saying? Email.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:54]

And we have time for at least, I think, two emails here, maybe three. We'll see how far we get as I go here. And so without further ado. First off. First off, an email from Isaiah. And Isaiah Wright?

Mostly Queen Mary [3:19]

I recently read a book that I thought you might enjoy: The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else's Game by Professor C. T. Wynne. Not personal finance or investing, but philosophy. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Specifically, an examination of the philosophy of data.

Voices [3:39]

I am not less perfect than Lore. I am not less perfect than Lore. Enough! Both of you, sit down.

Mostly Queen Mary [3:48]

He looks at scoring systems in games and sports, metrics in bureaucratic organizations, and how these systems can shape our behavior. Feel free to include or exclude from the podcast. It's not exactly on topic for risk parity, but may be of interest to fire-minded people. Isaiah.

Mostly Uncle Frank [4:08]

Fire, fire, fire, fire, well, first off, before we get to your email, thank you for being a donor to the Father McKenna Center. As most of you know, we do not have any sponsors on this program. We do have a charity we support. It's called the Father McKenna Center, and it supports hungry and homeless people in Washington, D.C. Full disclosure, I'm on the board of the charity and the current treasurer. There are two ways to give to the charity. You can go to the donation page at the Father McKenna website, which I'll link to in the show notes, or you can do what Isaiah has done here, which is become a patron on Patreon, which you do through the support page at www.riskpared.com. Either way, you get to go to the front of the email line, but just make sure you mention it in your email or the subject of your email, so I can duly move you to the front of the line.

Voices [4:55]

Yes!

Mostly Uncle Frank [4:56]

But now getting to your email. Well, I was not familiar with this book, The Score, because I think it's a relatively recent publication, but I'll give you a hack now that I found is really effective for getting up to speed on any kind of book that is nonfiction in particular. And this is what I tend to do these days. First I go ask at least one and usually two artificial intelligence bots, in this case I use Gemini, I think, for a summary of the book, and then a chapter-by-chapter summary. Then I take those things and I put them into Google Notebook LM, and then I have it generate me a slideshow and a video presentation, which is usually six to eight minutes long. Watch that, and then you have a great summary of the whole book. And you can do this whole process in about 15 minutes. And so that's what I did here. Shirley, you can't be serious.

Voices [5:48]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:51]

And I will link to these outputs in the show notes so you can check them out. But I'm thinking anymore, instead of recommending books to people, I'm just gonna send them these summaries because they're awesome. I can tell you that they're well worth the minimal effort required and really get you up to speed and then tell you whether you really want to spend time reading the book or not. It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. So this book makes the point that our lives have become increasingly gamified in just about everything we do, whether it has something to do with our career, something to do with our creative things like a podcast or a blog, something to do with your health. Everything seems to have numbers attached to it now.

Voices [6:33]

A number so perfect.

Mostly Uncle Frank [6:36]

Perfect. And so oftentimes the focus becomes on the numbers without regard to whether this is serving any real purpose in one's life. It makes the point that clarity with numbers is kind of like a seductive drug. Things like your GPA, Twitter likes, steps, credit scores provide a definitive sense of progress. So we crave this dopamine hit of getting a ding from seeing this number appear or seeing it go up or down, as the case may be. And that's actually the trap. He calls it value capture. And this occurs when our internal values are replaced or simplified by these kind of external metrics. So we chase the numbers and forget what the real goal was in the first place, whether it's to be healthy or have enough to retire or have good relationships or any number of other things that are not really that quantifiable. And our world is almost designed like this now, because that's how companies and other people get our attention by coming up with these numerical metrics. So he says, when social life is scored, we are not the players, but we are the pieces. Platforms gamify interaction to serve their goals, not ours. When you optimize for engagement, you're working for the platform.

Voices [7:51]

Alive, it's alive, it's alive.

Mostly Uncle Frank [7:59]

And he urges us to adopt an art of resistance where we moved from being captured by these technologies to being rebellious against them. So strategy one is cultivate metric mindfulness. You have this trigger where a number goes up, you feel a sensation, a dopamine rush. What you need to do is pause there and stop and separate that feeling from the fact of what is really happening, apart from the number, and ask the question: Am I doing this for the meaning of it, or am I doing it for a ding?

Voices [8:29]

Bing!

Mostly Uncle Frank [8:31]

And then he gives strategy two, which is guard the opaque spaces, noting that opacity is a protection where things are not being quantified. So choosing hobbies you don't post about or don't post about much. Hike without a GPS watch, which I don't own. Read without the tracking app, I don't do that either. But the idea is if it can't be measured, it can't be optimized by anybody but you. Strategy three is to use metrics as disposable tools. So treat them like game points, care about them temporarily, then stop. Use the budget app to learn your habits, then delete it, kick the ladder away once the intuition is built. Where this would apply to retirement and saving is obvious that once you have enough money to retire, you don't need to be keeping religious track of it or worrying about whether numbers going up or not anymore, because that's not serving any purpose anymore. And he suggests that we only spend 15% of our effort on what he calls metric compliance, pursuing these things or qualifying for whatever we need to do, basically taking a satisficing approach to that, whereas we optimize or spend the bulk of our time on the meaning and the true work of whatever this activity is. Save your soul for the work. That's what he says. And he contrasts the two mindsets, which he calls the captured mindset of a victim who focuses on the score, views numbers as objective truth, seeks clarity and certainty, changes values to fit the metric. This sounds like our frugal Bob character with the savings problem that Morgan Housell talks about, doesn't it? He urges the rebellious mindset, where you're not the victim but the agent, where you focus on the point of the activity in descriptive terms, not numeric terms, views numbers as disposable tools, accepts ambiguity and complexity, and changes the metric to fit the values. And his concluding thought is games are beautiful places to visit, but they are terrible places to live. So where this really fits in well for what we've been talking about recently, if you listen to the last episode and other episodes, I've often mentioned the four idols, which can sap our purpose and are kind of the things you don't want to be pursuing long term because they interfere with pursuing good relationships and doing the things that actually are going to make you happy and fulfilled. And those four idols are money, power, fame, and pleasure seeking. Now, in particular, the first three, money, power, and fame are all about these metrics these days. Obviously, you can watch number go up as far as the money is concerned. Power is generally measured on how many minions you have or what kind of organization you sit on top of, or maybe titles you have, those sorts of things. But those are quantifiable. And then fame now is very easily measured in clicks and likes and things like that, which is actually relatively new and is an interesting problem that social media has really raised in our consciousness. Most people couldn't play on that ground before, and now everybody can play and effectively keep score there. But the point of all those things is also that it allows you to do quote objective unquote comparisons between you and somebody else as to who has the most money, who has the po most power, who has the most fame. And that's where you get to comparison being the thief of joy, and why pursuing those things instead of pursuing things that make you happy, like relationships, getting into flow states, giving money away, or buying your time back. Which all are these more opaque kind of things. You can see that this is a very good illustration of kind of the overall problem in action, given the environment or the kind of environment we now live in. Which is helpful because then it can lead to concrete actions or intentionality on looking at your things you keep track of, and maybe you should stop keeping track of as many of them. I know it's popular to keep track of things like sleep and other things like that these days, but I've now heard from psychologists that oftentimes that's creating more anxiety than any benefit you would get out of knowing what these numbers are, because people are grading themselves based on their sleep scores and things like that, and then feeling bad about it when their sleep score is not high enough or their personal view of how they view themselves. So I think we need to ask ourselves whether just because we can keep track of a particular metric, is that actually valuable in some way? Is it actually helping us pursue a bigger goal, a descriptive goal, like getting more healthy? Or is it taking on some kind of life of its own? A lot of this stuff ought to be more satisfaced than optimized, because that's where it really gets obsessive when you're actually trying to hit this particular metric. And although I like people like Peter Atia and Dr. Huberman, a lot of what they talk about gets too far into these metrics. And I find myself asking more questions like what is the minimal effort for me to make to be reasonably healthy in these kind of metrics of blood pressure or glucose or cholesterol readings and things like that.

Voices [13:55]

Well, you haven't got the knack of being idly rich. You say you should do like me, just snooze and dream, dream and snooze. The pleasures are unlimited.

Mostly Uncle Frank [14:05]

And I really think the answer is what I mentioned in the last episode, is to look at a lot of these things and decide you're gonna satisfice them, you're not gonna optimize them and be intentional about that.

Voices [14:17]

And uh after that I just sort of space out for about an hour until I'm space out? Yeah. I just stare at my desk. But it looks like I'm working.

Mostly Uncle Frank [14:29]

Because you we need to be spending more of our time on things like relationships and not on things like metrics. Which is why I also think a lot of those morning routines go way too far, especially in terms of talking about exactly how many minutes we're going to do this particular activity each morning. Enough is enough with that.

Voices [14:48]

Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [14:50]

And then in terms of retirement finances, I think his point that we need to embrace ambiguity and complexity is very important. Because what this also goes to is these misuse of retirement calculators and trying to get too precise and just ending up being precisely wrong or creating anxiety that doesn't need to be there.

Voices [15:11]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [15:15]

Because the best we can really do with long-term planning is to get into reasonable ballparks.

Voices [15:20]

Yeah.

Mostly Uncle Frank [15:21]

Didn't you get that memo? And the more we focus on short-term metrics like whether our net worth went up or not last year, the worse off we're gonna be. Because life is about complex adaptive systems, including financial markets. Because life is about complex adaptive systems, including financial markets, and that is exactly where you have complexity and ambiguity, and you're not going to find precision and clarity, and if you look for it, it is going to be a false precision or a false clarity, which may mislead you.

Voices [15:55]

Hello! Hello, anybody home? Huh? Think McFly. Think.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:01]

Anyway, I very much enjoyed, quote, reading unquote in the way I read these books these days. And I think it's quite useful. I will link to those slideshow and video in the show notes so you guys can check them out as well. But I very much appreciate when people bring these things to my attention because I view this podcast as kind of an ongoing conversation with a bunch of people walking in and out of a dive bar.

Voices [16:32]

Hey, what's happening, Norm?

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:34]

And a lot of times the most interesting things is when somebody shows up and says, Hey, check this out. Because you guys bring a lot of interesting topics and information in here, which makes this podcast a whole lot better than it would be if it were just me talking about my metrics.

Voices [16:56]

I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:01]

So thank you for your support of the Father McKenna Center, and thank you for your email. And I think we'll just do one more.

Voices [17:20]

Second off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:21]

Last off. Second off and last off, we have an email from Mike.

Voices [17:28]

Let's get Mikey. Yeah. He won't need it. He hates everything.

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:33]

And Mike writes.

Mostly Queen Mary [17:34]

Dear Frank and Mary, I am entering retirement and thankful for your help as I gain confidence in my retirement allocations for decumulation. You are a gift to many seeking confidence in a new era of our lives.

Voices [17:49]

You gotta buy!

Mostly Queen Mary [17:57]

I am now a first-time donor to the Father McKenna Center because of your goodwill, my Christian Catholic faith, and my confidence that a productive risk parity portfolio will enable room for more significant charitable giving as I reach my stride in retirement. Incidentally, I am blind and appreciate your verbal renditions of the portfolio updates, and I've even grown fond of the soundtrack snippets now that my life is becoming less hurried as work-life duties wane.

Voices [18:26]

The best, Jerry, the best.

Mostly Queen Mary [18:34]

First, a most conventional mode for tax-deferred 403B slash 401k, which will fuel most of my living needs, and a secondary, more aggressive risk parity model guiding Roth funds for deferred needs like periodic special projects, long-term care needs, or inheritance. One, for the bulk of my investments, tax-deferred 403b slash 401k, I wish to slightly increase stock holdings from 42% to nearly 50%, so I target a reduced base cash allocation and may also borrow 1% from the bonds and gold to reach my stock weighting goal. I desire a 4% cash allocation representing a 4% plus safe withdrawal rate with dividends adding to reach the 5% annual withdrawal potential. As you noted, your personal portfolio reduced cash for additional stock holdings. I asked, how did you increase stock holdings? Did you boost VUG slash AVUV at AVNM? Or did you split between AVDV and IDMO at what might seem like a minuscule allocation to international? My idea is to boost stock by 4% by reducing cash to 4%, GLDM to 15%, VGLT to 25%. Would you personally direct this extra 4% to AV? NM, a split of AVDV slash IDMO, or just add to VUG slash AVUV. Two, I wish to go more aggressive on my Roth holdings, striving towards 60% stock there, as my needs there may be periodic or deferred. In doing so, my idea of a portfolio of 24% VUG, 10% SCHD, 14% AVUV, 4% IDMO, 4% AVDV, 10% VGLT, 10% VGIT, 10% GLDM, 10% DBMF, 4% SGOV. In building this more aggressive Roth allocation, I need to decide on the importance of alternatives versus bonds and the merits of half VGLT slash VGIT or all VGLT given what would be a smaller bond allocation. Your perspective on my plan and the options for these waitings is appreciated. Thanks again for all you do, Mike. He likes it. Hey Mikey!

Mostly Uncle Frank [21:15]

Well, thank you also for being a donor to the Father McKenna Center, Michael. It has moved you to the front of the line as well as garnered my undying gratitude. Now, if you do give to the center directly, you probably get on the email list, and we sent out our most recent email telling you all what's going on down there these days. We're in the middle of our hypothermia program where we take a select group of men who have applied and allow them to stay in the center overnight and be fed and participate in a number of programs. People have to apply for that. And that's going well. We teach things like financial literacy. Time is money, boy. And one of our board members takes care of that. We're also having coming up what we kind of call immersion season. And we have relationships with a lot of different colleges who will send little groups of students down to the Father McKenna Center for a week at a time. And this generally goes on starting about now and through the spring. But they get a chance to stay at the center, work at the center, and get a feel for what we do. And if you follow us on Instagram, you'll see the interactions with the various college students. I think we got University of Scranton down there most recently. So before I get to your questions about the portfolio, I did want to thank you for your feedback on the portfolio updates. Because I think most people would say that that is the least interesting part of this podcast, and people who teach people how to make podcasts would probably say, don't do something like that in a podcast. But one of the fundamental characters of this podcast is not everything is for most people. And in fact, oftentimes some of the things I say or do around here are only for one or two people, because only one or two people are going to get what I'm saying.

Voices [23:03]

You are talking about the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.

Mostly Uncle Frank [23:09]

And so talking about keeping score, not keeping score, I am way less interested in the number of downloads or clicks or any of those metrics that go with podcasting than I am with the individual experiences and the level of engagement of the people that are here. Because I feel almost better if I'm doing something and I know that this is for this one person, and that one person is sitting there and is happy to receive that than worrying about whether the rest of the world would think it's appropriate or would like it or not.

Voices [23:46]

My father says that you have been my friend. You came back for me. You would have done the same for me. Why will you do this? Because the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many.

Mostly Uncle Frank [24:14]

Because I get so many solicitations from people want to help promote the podcast or chop up the podcast or make videos about the podcast. And I understand why that's important to most podcasters because they're trying to build a big audience and sell ads and that sort of thing. But that's not really why we're here and why I'm doing this. As I mentioned many times, we have a different business model here.

Voices [24:41]

I got this inkling. I got this idea for a business model. I just want to run it past you. Here's how it would work. You get a bunch of people around the world who are doing highly skilled work, but they're willing to do it for free and volunteer their time 20, sometimes 30 hours a week. Oh, but I'm not done. And then what they create, they give it away rather than sell it. It's gonna be huge. What's going on? Why are people doing this? Why are they why are these people, many of whom are technically sophisticated, highly skilled people who have jobs? Okay? They have jobs. They're working at jobs for pay, doing challenging, doing sophisticated technological work. And yet, during their limited discretionary time, they do equally, if not more, technically sophisticated work, not for their employer, but for someone else for free.

Mostly Uncle Frank [25:35]

And that's fundamentally why we have no sponsors, we have no guests, and we have no expansion plans. Because I'd really like this podcast to be about me and the listeners and Mary.

Voices [25:47]

Mary, Mary, I need you hugging.

Mostly Uncle Frank [25:56]

Remember that when you're writing your emails. And not worry about what other people think. And I always think back to something I learned a long time ago, and it's called Dunbar's number. And Dunbar's number is 150. And what Dunbar's number is supposed to signify is that is about the most number of people that any one individual can have meaningful interactions with. That once you get beyond that, you're not really having meaningful interactions because there's just too many people involved. And we now have like 3,000 listeners to this podcast. But obviously, there's a lot smaller number who are really into it and who choose to write in. But we have more than enough people here to make this worthwhile and worth doing and enjoyable for me to do. So I really appreciate the feedback. Except we're not getting rid of the soundbite, so you can forget about that.

Voices [26:55]

You can't handle the dogs and cats living together.

Mostly Uncle Frank [26:59]

So getting to your questions, I think you're fine with respect to all of this, and what you were talking is just tweaking a little bit around the edges. Because there is ambiguity with respect to these portfolios, and there really is no way of saying that this one, which is a few percentage different from another one, is a meaningful difference, at least in any way that you can quantify. So you asked how we handle cash in our portfolio, and the truth is we try to minimize holding cash at all. It's always money in a banana stand. Because I'd rather use that six percent in a golden ratio kind of portfolio to putting it into more stocks, which in our case ends up being an international kind of allocation. If you really want to simplify this down, you could do 50% stocks that are 40% in US and 10% in international, or change that. Just make sure they're divided up into growth and value. You can have 25% in treasury bonds and then 25% in alternatives, and you can re-jigger how you want that. That would be the simplest formulation of all of this, and that I know a number of listeners have adopted something like that. So if you wanted to pull 4% of cash out of something like that, you'd end up with essentially about 48% in stocks, 24% in treasury bonds, and then the remaining 24% devoted to your alternatives, and then you'd have a 4% allocation you could put into cash. And that would be the simplest way to do that. We generally only have around about 1% to 2% in cash at any one time. And what I'm generally looking at is what are going to be our big bills in the next three to six months in terms of taxes and other lumpy expenses because we pay our insurances annually, and February and March is also gift time in terms of giving money to our children to put in their Roth IRAs. Everybody gets something.

Voices [29:05]

Yeah. Everybody getting something. Everybody getting something. Everybody's been on cheese. Everybody's gonna float. If you bring from stuff, simple flips, it comes something flops.

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:20]

But the reason we feel comfortable with that is because our taxable account is at Interactive Brokers or most of it, except for like these little sample portfolios and other things. And we have a margin account there. So we can easily access more than a year's worth of cash if we actually needed it at any time and then manage that away over time.

Voices [29:43]

You need somebody watching your back at all times.

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:47]

If you have access to something like that, great. If you don't, then yes, I would keep more cash around because it'll just make your life a lot easier. And I think 4% is a very good number because as you mentioned, you're also going to be getting the dividends and income coming off some of these assets as you go. Now, looking at your Roth assets, I actually would not put any in SGOV, which is essentially cash, in there. I would uh put all of that back into stock holdings. And I mean, you could raise your international holdings by adding that 4% to the ones you've got there. But the other thing you should be thinking about is what usually makes sense is not to have a whole portfolio in each account like that, but to use tax location to essentially have an unbalanced portfolio in terms of what's in what account. So you'd put the most aggressive things in the Roth, and the Roth might be 100% in stocks. And so all of those bonds and any of those other income payers are going to go into the traditional retirement accounts. Because that's really where they go.

Voices [30:52]

That's the fact, Jack! That's the fact, Jack!

Mostly Uncle Frank [30:56]

And although it tends to look unbalanced when you just look at each account, overall it does come out to balancing because the assets don't perform differently just because they're in a different account. And you don't need to necessarily rebalance something in one account against something in the same account, but can rebalance it across accounts. And if you haven't looked at the or listened to the asset swap video that Justin of Risk Parity Chronicles has prepared, I'll link to that again in the show notes because there's a way to kind of swap assets to make this all work out. If you're wondering, if I don't have enough of this kind of asset to sell in this kind of account, what do I do? There's a workaround for that. It's not that hard actually.

Voices [31:38]

Okay, team, let's get to work. Can we fix it? Yes, we can.

Mostly Uncle Frank [31:45]

I can tell you our returns often look kind of funny when you compare these accounts. So, for instance, our taxable account is almost all stocks and now some gold because we've been selling gold out of the retirement accounts first. Whereas all of our bonds and managed futures and things that would go with that part of the portfolio in the taxable account are in a traditional retirement account. And so these days, that taxable account, I think it went up 30 some percent last year, 33%, whereas the other assets were just kind of sitting there going up like 5% or something like that in the retirement account. And it's like 6% and 2% this year so far. But what really matters in the end is the overall performance and then making sure you are optimized for taxes so you're not generating lots of ordinary income in taxable accounts and things like that. So I would definitely try to be more aggressive in the Roth and not necessarily put a complete risk parity kind of portfolio in that Roth if you've got room in your other accounts. But this is going to vary very much by how much room you have in each of these accounts and other factors like that. So hopefully that helps and I didn't actually confuse you. I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast. 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 eight sample portfolios you can find at www.riskperator.com on the portfolios page. And we are having a lot of fun this year.

Voices [33:30]

Oh boy, is this great!

Mostly Uncle Frank [33:34]

But just looking at the markets first. The SP 500, represented by VOO, is up 1.07% for the year so far. The Nasdaq 100, represented by QQQ, is up 1.37% for the year so far. Small cap value is doing much better. Guess what? Our representative fund VIOV is already up 7.02% for the year so far.

Voices [33:59]

I got a fever. And the only prescription is more cowbell.

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:04]

And one of the only things doing better than that is gold.

Voices [34:07]

This is gold, Mr. Bond.

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:10]

Representative fund GLDM is up 15.51% for the year so far.

Voices [34:17]

I think you've made your point, Goldfinger. Thank you for the demonstration.

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:22]

Which sounds ridiculous, but sometimes it happens.

Voices [34:26]

Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die.

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:32]

Long-term treasury bonds represented by the fund VGLT are up 0.56% for the year so far. REITs represented by the fund REET are up 2.12% for the year so far. Commodities represented by the fund PDBC are up 8.23% for the year so far. So even better than the small cap value. Preferred shares represented by the fund PFFV are up 1.89%. And managed futures are managing to be up substantially. Representative fund DBMF is up 4.63% for the year so far. Moving to these portfolios. First one's the all seasons. This is just a reference portfolio. That's probably a bit too conservative for most purposes. It is 30% in a total stock market fund, 55% in intermediate and long-term treasury bonds, and the remaining 15% in golden commodities is up 2.60% month to date and year to date, and it's up 26.48% since inception in July 2020. Moving to these more bread and butter kind of portfolios, first one's 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, GLDM. It's up 5.35% for the month of January and the year so far. And it's up 68.08% since inception in July 2020. Now moving to the golden ratio. The Golden Ratio. What's the answer? What's the answer?

Voices [36:09]

What's the answer, Mr. Sacred Geometic, Sacred Geometry, Sacred Geometry? The Golden Ratio.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:17]

The Golden Ratio. This one is 42% in stocks divided into a large cap growth fund, which is actually down on the year so far, and a small cap value fund.

Voices [36:31]

I'm telling you, fellas, you're gonna want that cowbell.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:34]

26% in long-term treasury bonds, 16% in gold, 10% in managed futures, and 6% in cash. This one is up 4.84% for the month of January in the year so far, and it's up 61.88% since inception in July 2020. Next one's the risk parity ultimate. Not going to go through all 12 of these funds. It's up 4.64% for the month of January in the year so far, and up 46.22% since inception in July 2020. Now moving to these experimental portfolios involving leveraged funds. And these boxes of scraps are doing pretty well this time. First one's the accelerated permanent portfolio. This one is 27.5% in TMF, it's a levered bond fund. 25% in UPRO, that's a levered stock fund. 25% in PFFV, a preferred shares fund, and 22.5% in gold, GLDM. Although that looks more closer to 32% these days. Anyway, this one is up 5.83% for the month of January and year to date, and up 30.62% since inception in July 2020. Next one's the aggressive 50-50. This is the most levered and least diversified of these portfolios and by far the worst performer. It is one-third in a levered stock fund UPRO, one-third in a levered bond fund TMF, and the remaining third divided into a preferred shares fund and an intermediate treasury bond fund. It is hurting versus the rest of them because it doesn't have any gold in it or anything else like that. It's up 1.57% for the month of January and year to date, and down 0.17% since inception in July 2020. Next one's a levered golden ratio. This one's a year younger than the first six. It is 35% in NTSX, that's a composite levered fund composed of the S P 500 and Treasury bonds levered up 1.5 to 1. 15% in AVDV, it's an international small cap value fund. 20% in gold, GLDM, 10% in KMLM, that is a managed futures fund, 10% in TMF, which is a levered bond fund, and the remaining 10% divided into UDOW and UTSL, which are a Dow fund and a utilities fund. It's up 5.52% for the month of January and year to date, and up 26.49% since inception in July 2021. And the last one, and our newest one, is the OPTRA portfolio. One portfolio to rule them all. And it is indeed ruling them all. So this one is 16% in a Levered Stock Fund UPRO, 24% in AVGV, that is a worldwide value fund, 24% in GOVZ, that's a Treasury Strips fund, and the remaining 36% divided into gold and managed futures. It is up 6.48% for the month of January and year to date so far, and up 37.39% since. Inception in July 2024. So it is going gangbusters in technical terms. So it's an interesting and peculiar start to the new year. It is relatively unusual for these kinds of portfolios, due to their diversification, to outperform stock markets when stock markets are going up. Usually when you see outperformances when the stock market is not doing well. Although you could almost say the stock market is flat right now. So it's not doing well in that sense. But this does happen from time to time. It has happened historically. So it's not like it's unprecedented or something like that. Anyway, we'll take it when we can get it. And I'm sure people have been holding these portfolios since our early days here are very pleased with the results they're experiencing.

Voices [41:08]

I love money.

Mostly Uncle Frank [41:10]

Because I am too. We'll be doing a renovation project on our house this year, mostly in the master bathroom. And this'll help pay for a lot of that. Because it's gonna be a big job.

Voices [41:23]

Why, someone left this job half done! Can we fix it? Yes, we can! Ain't nobody finishing nothing! I'm sorry. Who are you? We're from the union. And we say you don't have the right equipment for this job. We have all the equipment we need. Really? You got a talking briefcase full of hundred dollar bills over there? No, but oh, okay, that's you know uh whoa! Hey! Can I play too? Don't forget to wear your safety goggles. Oh, thanks, Bob.

Mostly Uncle Frank [42:04]

Anyway, bear in mind, this is unusual, and there could very well be bumps in the road ahead that when something like gold historically has run up like this, it does drop precipitously at some point. The problem is you don't know what that point is. So it could have gone up just to 3,000 and then dropped back to 2,000. Now it's up at 5,000. Will it drop down to 3,800 or something? I don't know. Or will it keep going up?

Voices [42:32]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [42:36]

We can consult the crystal ball, but you know what it's gonna say.

Voices [42:40]

We don't know! What do we know? You don't know, I don't know, nobody knows.

Mostly Uncle Frank [42:46]

The point is we just need to manage these things as we planned, and so when it's time to rebalance out of something that is performing really well, make sure you are doing that rebalancing and selling that thing off. We'll be selling some as we go here, but I imagine a lot of that is going to happen in July when most of these portfolios are rebalanced. But that's really the way these portfolios are designed, to hopefully always have something that's going up that can be sold without having to predict or know in advance what that something's going to be in any particular year. That's the whole point of diversification. And with that, now I see our signal is beginning to fade. If you have comments or questions for me, please send them to Frank at RiskPardyReader.com. Email us frank at riskparty reader.com. Or you can go to the website www.riskparty.com. Put your message into the contact form, and I'll get it all 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 follow, a review. That would be great. Okay. Thank you once again for tuning in. This is Frank Vasquez with Risk Party Radio Signing off.

Voices [44:16]

In my mind and in my clothes, we can't rewind, we've gone to a spot. But you scheme broke your heart.

Mostly Queen Mary [45:21]

The Risk Parody 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.