Voices [0:00]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little mind. Adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divine. 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 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. And the basic foundational episodes are episodes 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. Yes, it is still in my memory banks. We have also created an additional resource, a collection of additional foundational episodes and other popular episodes.

Voices [1:07]

We have top men working on it right now. Ooh.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:14]

Top men. And you can find those on the episode guide page at www.riskparty radio.com. Inconceivable! All thanks to our friend Luke, our volunteer in Quebec. Sacosh. We'd be helpless without him.

Voices [1:35]

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:41]

Because other than him, it's just me and Marion here. I'll give you the moon, bye.

Voices [1:46]

I'll take it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:48]

We have no sponsors, we have no guests, and we have no expansion plans.

Voices [1:52]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:55]

Over the years, our podcast has become very audienced focused, and I must say we do have the finest podcast audience available.

Voices [2:04]

Really top drawer.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:07]

Along with a host named after a hot dog.

Voices [2:10]

Lighten up, Francis.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:13]

But now onward, episode 486. Titan Risk Party Radio.

Voices [2:19]

Guess what? It's time for the grand unveiling of money!

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:25]

Which means we'll be doing our weekly portfolio reviews of the eight sample portfolios you can find at www.riskparty.com on the portfolios page.

Voices [2:35]

I could have used a little more cowbell.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:37]

And won't that be exciting?

Voices [2:40]

Oh boy, is this great? But before we get to that, I'm intrigued by this. How you say email. And first off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:55]

First off, we have an email from Serge.

Voices [2:58]

First, you must get to know your lane. Feel this slickness, feel this settlement finish. Correct it. Experience it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [3:08]

And Serge writes?

Mostly Queen Mary [3:10]

I really, really enjoy your podcast. I look forward to each new release and listen to every episode.

Voices [3:17]

Abby normal.

Mostly Queen Mary [3:19]

You've definitely found a niche not well served by other financial podcasts. Here is my question, please. Most of your advice seems focused on the accumulation and drawdown retirement phases of life, with portfolios containing a mixture of low or uncorrelated asset types. The goal, it seems, is to make one's money last through retirement while at the same time mitigating portfolio volatility. Some individuals, however, have been fortunate enough to accumulate a relatively large portfolio well beyond what is needed in retirement, even if there were to be a severe and lengthy market downturn. Individuals in this situation likely are managing their portfolios for the benefit of their kids who will inherit or grandkids. In essence, these individuals are acting like endowment funds and managing their portfolios in perpetuity. For portfolios managed in perpetuity, what role do golden butterfly or their many variations play? Do gold, commodities, reits, or tips have a role in such portfolios? Or is it more a case of loading up on equities with a sprinkling of treasuries and then riding the volatility waves as they come and go? Thank you in advance for your response, Serge.

Voices [4:41]

Quite smooth, isn't it, Mark? Oh, very smooth. Smooth? Yes, very smooth. Yes. Yes. Yes. Smooth. Smooth. Yes. Yes. You could eat off of it. Hmm. You hungry? Yes. Four onion rings.

Mostly Uncle Frank [4:54]

Well, Serge, I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast. A very sick man. Yes, I suppose some people would say that we found a niche here. Other people might say something else.

Voices [5:06]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:11]

But we shall carry on regardless.

Voices [5:14]

I think in one of the earlier shows I mentioned we don't make mistakes. We have happy accidents.

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:22]

Now, getting to your question, this raises a number of interesting issues, actually. And the primary issue it raises is one that a lot of people in popular personal finance don't actually want to talk about. And that is when are you going to spend this money? What is it actually for?

Voices [5:44]

There's only one use for money, and that's to make more money.

Mostly Uncle Frank [5:48]

And sometimes you get a lot of vague answers. Well, I might give it away here, or I might give it to my kids, or I might do this, or I might do that. And what it is actually masking is a tendency to hoard money and a desire to keep control of one's life by hoarding money.

Voices [6:08]

But Mr. Howell, I want to spend it to make people happy. Well, that's a very noble sentiment, very warm and generous, but stupid.

Mostly Uncle Frank [6:14]

So the question you need to get clear about, and everybody needs to get clear about, if you have extra money, is what are you going to do with it and when is it going to get spent? Question. Because if you don't have that in your mind, if you don't know the answer to that question, then you can't answer your questions about what should I invest it in? Because it's all tied up on when are you going to actually use the money. That's what dictates what you invested in.

Voices [6:44]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [6:49]

So one popular way of approaching this, it's probably the dominant way of approaching this, is well, I'm just going to sit on it until I'm dead and then I'm going to give it to somebody else and they'll spend it or whatever.

Voices [6:59]

Dead is dead.

Mostly Uncle Frank [7:01]

And assuming you're not planning on dying anytime soon, the way to invest that money is pretty obvious. You put it in 90 or 100% in stocks and equity index funds and just leave it alone. And the next person will come along and figure out what to do with it then. Because you're basically accumulating it for somebody else who's going to get it in several decades. And once you're talking about accumulating for several decades, you're just talking about a basic accumulation portfolio, which can be 100% equities. The Warren Buffett 9010 portfolio is also popular here, where you have 90% in equities and 10% in T bills. But there's nothing magical to that either. And in fact, if your retirement strategy is simply not to spend much money as in less than 3% of your assets, you can hold that kind of portfolio until death because what you're really saying is your primary financial goal is to accumulate as much money at death as possible. That is what's called your revealed preference. The objective consequences of your action.

Voices [8:02]

More money, more money, more money.

Mostly Uncle Frank [8:05]

Whether you subjectively say you're doing something else or not is neither here nor there. So the next thing you might do with this excess wealth is actually distribute it while you're alive. And that tends to make the most sense from a relationship point of view, and this is what sophisticated wealth advisors actually advise. People like Jim Grubman. Because if the real purpose of the money is to enhance your relationships with your family and make your family thrive, or other people you might want to give this money to, that should happen while you're alive and are in a position to do it and appreciate the consequences of using this money for somebody else's education or business or wedding or whatever. So if that's what you're doing, then you have a couple of options. You could simply give chunks of money to your children and grandchildren, which is partially what we do. Our kids are in their twenties, and so one of the things we do is every year they get a little chunk of change to fund a Roth IRA. Because if they're going to get the money anyway, it actually makes a whole lot more sense for it to be accumulating in their accounts and not your accounts. This is something people just don't get.

Voices [9:27]

Yeah. Didn't you get that memo?

Mostly Uncle Frank [9:30]

They want to sit on big piles of CDs or tip sladders or other oddities as they get older and older, and that money's going to go to these younger people anyway. Why don't you just give it to them now so they can put it in a Roth or something where it can grow? And so we're not doing all this rigma roll just to keep control of the money. Because we don't want them to have it when they're young. Teach them a lesson. I tell you, teaching people a lesson like this is really stupid. There's a great story in Morgan Housell's recent book, The Art of Spending Money, where he's talking about these kids that have this grandparent who is like, Well, I'll buy you a lift ticket if you walk up the ski hill at least once. As if that is teaching them a lesson about money and stuff. It's not teaching them a lesson. You know what they thought? They didn't think grandpa was sophisticated or a great teacher or something. The quote in the book is, they thought grandpa was an asshole.

Voices [10:40]

That is the straight stuff, oh funk master.

Mostly Uncle Frank [10:43]

Is that what you want to be? Do you want to be the asshole in the family? Well, just hoard your money and try to teach people lessons with it, and you'll get that reputation pretty quickly.

Voices [10:52]

Am I right or am I right or am I right?

Mostly Uncle Frank [10:56]

So if you're not going to give it to them and just have them put it in accounts for their accumulations, and you really want to spend money at a clip essentially using this as part of your retirement, and this is essentially what we do because we try to, of the 5% that we spend every year, about 1% of that is in fact spent on other people, giving it away, supporting family, other things like that. So basically, I'm saying, why don't you just increase your spending amount, use this as part of your retirement funds, and then it makes sense to invest it in something like a risk parity style portfolio. Because if you look at how and why people use these kind of strategies, it is very highly related to endowment strategies. In an endowment, typically you are trying to actually spend about 5% of the corpus every year. So you want a well-diversified portfolio that can deal with that kind of spending. So if your idea is to take this extra money while you're alive and kind of spread it around every year with some part of that money coming out and available for distribution, then it makes sense to have a risk parity style portfolio or other kind of portfolio to allow you to do that. And that's really the whole purpose of constructing one of these kind of portfolios, to allow you to spend more money now and while you are alive in the next few decades and not be squirreling it away for future accumulation.

Voices [12:23]

Donate to the children's fund? Why? What have children ever done for me?

Mostly Uncle Frank [12:28]

And so if you were going to manage money in perpetuity, like you say, set up some kind of foundation or trust or something like that, yes, you could set that up as a risk parity style portfolio. Because particularly if it's in a trust form, you don't want the trust to be holding on to lots of money and paying a lot of taxes on it. You usually want to distribute that out of the trust every year, because otherwise the trust gets taxed at a very unfavorable rate. There are many ways to structure this though. And I do know people who actually listen to this podcast who are doing such things. So the answer to your question ends up being very simple, and it's all related to are you going to spend the money now, later, or when? Because if you're going to spend the money out of a portfolio, then you want it diversified so you can spend the most money out of it without having big drawdowns. And if you don't care about that, you just want to accumulate for some period of decades or something, then it can go into an accumulation style portfolio. I wouldn't use tips in either case, but you can search the podcast and find out why.

Voices [13:29]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [13:36]

It is interesting, a lot of what I learned about diversification in portfolios was originally studying things like pensions, endowments, and other funds designed to pay out a certain amount in perpetuity. And there are a lot of pension funds that are structured on risk parity principles, including where I live, the Fairfax County, Virginia Police and Fire Pension Fund is a risk parity style portfolio.

Voices [14:03]

Now all of a sudden she starts knocking down in the gym. She started to rock and I looked in the mirror, red light was blinking, the cops was after my hot by linking.

Mostly Uncle Frank [14:14]

Now it's a lot more complicated than what we do here, but we are applying those principles and simplifying them. So all you really need to do is get clear on what you're actually doing with the money and when it's actually going to be distributed. And then you can construct the correct portfolio for that kind of plan. Because personal finance is finance. Your financial behaviors should match your financial goals. I just urge you not to be a hypocrite about it or to be fooling yourself by saying you want to distribute the money and then hoarding it in a bunch of index funds. Because if you're doing that, your financial behaviors are not matching your financial goals.

Voices [14:53]

That's the fact, Jeff.

Mostly Uncle Frank [14:55]

And you can make as many justifications as you want for that, but in the end it doesn't really make any sense and is not going to enhance your well-being in life if you do things like that.

Voices [15:06]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [15:10]

You'll end up being the grandpa with a bad reputation in the family.

Voices [15:20]

One trick is to tell them stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they call Shelbyville in those days.

Mostly Uncle Frank [15:38]

So hopefully that helps. And thank you for your email.

Voices [15:43]

Marge, do you know how beautiful you look in the moonlight? I'm a married woman. I know, I know. My mind says stop, but my heart and my gifts cry proceed. Marge, darling, I want to see you tomorrow. Not at Barney's polar. I'm away from the thunderous folly of clattering pins. Meet me tomorrow for brunch. What's brunch? Love it. It's not quite breakfast. It's not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end. Marge, darling. There are ten pins in my heart. You've knocked over eight. Won't you please pick up that spare? Second off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:25]

Second off, we have an email from Nielsen. Shirley, you can't be serious. I am serious. And don't call me Shirley. And Nielsen writes.

Mostly Queen Mary [16:34]

Longtime listener in Georgia, love your new webpage. Simple and easily navigable. Love the link section.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:41]

The best, Jerry. The best. Well, Nielsen, I'm loving the new webpage too, especially since the effort I put into it was very minimal, and the effort our volunteer Luke in Quebec put in and has been putting into it has been monumental, and we are extremely grateful for all of his efforts.

Voices [17:00]

We have top men working on it right now.

Mostly Uncle Frank [17:04]

For the rest of you who have not gone to the website recently or have never gone to the website, it is now searchable in many different ways. Sackgosh. And includes all of the transcripts for all of the podcasts. And you can either search the podcast just by title and show notes, or you can search them by references in the transcripts as well. We also have an episode guide page which categorizes various episodes by what they say, because a lot of the early episodes we were talking about very specific assets, or we have our introductory episodes, and then there's a whole category of the most popular episodes in each season. If you're just looking for a smattering of what people think is the most interesting stuff around here, you might peruse that because I know we almost have 500 episodes now, and only the most diligent or most abnormal listeners will plow through the entire catalog.

Voices [18:00]

What we do is if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Put it up to a devin. Exactly.

Mostly Uncle Frank [18:07]

There is also a place to search all the links in the podcast. And the links to this podcast are really important because I really try to only say things here that are supported by some kind of authoritative source, whether that be academic papers, white papers, data analyses, or other kinds of research. And if you really want to know why I think what I think, it's because somebody else has already thought it, and all I am doing is integrating the best sets of ideas I can find about investing and investing for this particular purpose of spending the most money in retirement possible. Because there's really no reason that I or any other amateur investor needs to be reinventing wheels here. Or just relying on popular personal finance sources, which are usually okay on the surface, but oftentimes fundamentally lacking in best practices, usually because they're too fixated on things like simplicity. I'm not a smart man. Which should be the thing you do after you've found the best practices, and not the thing you do instead of the best practices. That's what I'm talking about. So, hopefully, you're enjoying this. Thanks to our volunteer Luke in Quebec again. Chris des Tavarnac Twimots, Chris. And uh thank you for your email. Next off, an email from Paul.

Voices [19:34]

In prison, dinner was always a big thing. Polly did the prep work, he was doing a year for contempt, and he had this wonderful system for doing the garlic. He used a razor and he used to slice it so thin that it used to liquefy in the pan with just a little oil. It's a very good system.

Mostly Uncle Frank [19:50]

And Paul Wrights.

Mostly Queen Mary [19:52]

Hi, I was listening to episode 352. In that episode, you refer to GLD as an ETF. Yes, it is an exchange traded fund in the sense that it is traded on an exchange. But it is not an ETF. It is an ETP. ETPs are registered with the SEC, but not regulated under the 1940 Investment Company Act. You probably know all this, and maybe you kept it simple for your listeners. Anyway, I enjoyed the episode. Paul.

Voices [20:21]

Don't put too many onions in the sauce. I don't put too much onions in the three small onions. That's all I did. Three onions. How many cans did they maybe should put in there? I'll put two cans, two big cans.

Mostly Uncle Frank [20:33]

You don't need three onions. Well, guess what, Paul? Guess what? GLD is both an ETF and an ETP. And the easiest way to learn this is to use all of your fun AI bots that now exist, or do the searches on your own. And you will find if you ask about ETFs and ETPs and their relationship, the answer you'll get will be all ETFs are ETPs, but not all ETPs are ETFs. Think of ETP as the umbrella term, like vehicle, and ETF as the most common specific type, like car. So ETP stands for exchange traded products. There are three kinds. I should say ETF stands for Exchange Traded Fund. There are also ETNs, which are exchange traded notes, which are typically issued by a bank. And they used to be more popular than they are today. And then there is also something called an ETC, which is an exchange traded commodity. And it is a product specifically designed to track commodities such as oil, gold, and wheat. So those are the technical definitions as a practical matter. People generally say ETF when they mean any of these things that can be traded on an exchange. And if you go to the ETF database, you will find all of these things. But if you really want to know what something is, you do need to look at the prospectus. Yes! And therein concludes your lesson in exchange traded products. I hope you found it as scintillating as I did.

Voices [22:28]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [22:34]

And I hope you're enjoying the podcast, and thank you for your email.

Voices [22:39]

Okay, boys, let's see. Come on, ready, ready. Tomorrow we extend which you gotta go on a dining ready. Believe me.

Mostly Uncle Frank [22:55]

Last off. Last off we have an email from Lauren. Lauren Hill, not her real name.

Voices [23:04]

Strummin my pain with his fingers. Singing my life with his words.

Mostly Queen Mary [23:15]

And Lauren writes Hi Frank, I'm 37. I was lucky enough to find fire and various financial independence concepts in my early to mid-twenties. Fire, fire, fire, fire. I have a successful career, I've saved and invested diligently, and I am now considering taking a year or more off. I have a very corporate, very demanding job, and now that my portfolio has crossed the seven-figure mark, I want to explore some other interests and passions. I expect to make money in the future, but I do not know if I will ever return to full-time W-2 work again. Is it wise to transition to a risk parity portfolio for this period of time? Or should I keep my accumulation portfolio and live off cash for a bit? Thank you for your content. It has been fun to learn more about decumulation portfolios and fun to think about the next chapter of life.

Voices [24:10]

OB. Yeah. Yeah, baby!

Mostly Uncle Frank [24:18]

Well, Lauren, I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast too. And we need to specify exactly what you're thinking of doing here. What would you say you do here? It sounds like you're thinking of taking some kind of sabbatical or break from full-time work. And if that is the case, typically what you would do is save up enough money in cash to do that, because usually we're talking about a year to two years for one of these sorts of things. There's a great book by my friend Gillian Johnsrude that you should read. It's called Retire Often. And it is exactly about this kind of situation and how you might negotiate it with your employer or decide to leave your employer. Anyway, there are a number of options that she explores in that book for somebody who's thinking of this kind of situation where they're getting a bit burnt out, but they may not be ready to call it quits for the long term. In that situation, you would probably save up a big pile of cash essentially, because we're talking about less than two years. Plan to live on that, and then the rest of your portfolio, assuming you plan to go back to work, you would just leave in some kind of accumulation mode, assuming you weren't planning on touching it for still many decades. Where you would consider on making a shift to a risk parity style portfolio or something like that, is when you plan to be actually using that money in the near term. So if your idea was I'm going to quit this job, take on some other employment that doesn't cover my expenses and live off my portfolio at least partially, yes, then you would want it into a retirement style configuration. And one of these portfolios may work very well for you. Now there is a third option, which is just kind of the basic Coast Fi option, which is you've saved enough that you can use that money for retirement, say in a couple of decades, in a 401k or somewhere else. So you would just leave that alone in its accumulation configuration. As we were talking about, it could be 90 or 100% in stocks. But then you would be planning on making enough money from work to support your current lifestyle, so you actually wouldn't need to touch that or rely upon it. And that is actually what my friend Diana Merriam does, who runs the Economy Conference. She makes enough from her side gig on Optimal Finance Daily as a podcast host, and now is actually making something from the Economy Conference. Oh, that was not always the case. And so she's able to live on that money, and then the rest of the money that she had already accumulated in retirement accounts is still invested in 100% equities, and it's going to be there in a couple of decades when she feels like she needs to access it and then she'll work on moving it to some other kind of portfolio at that time. She also keeps about a year's worth of cash on hand, which sounds like a lot, but if you are some kind of entrepreneur or you have irregular income and you're living on it essentially, or you're living on this irregular income, it does actually make sense to have that much cash. Anyway, so what I would do if I were you is go do some research on these options, read Gillian's book, look up the concept of Coast Fi. You'll find a lot of material out there now about this. Also look up something called slow fi from the Fioneers, which is a variation on this as well. And that'll give you a bunch of options here as to how you want to pursue this. But I'm glad you've done well, and I'm also glad that you are not stuck in some kind of one more year syndrome or something like that, or feel trapped like you have to keep doing this particular job. Because it really sounds like you really don't.

Voices [27:59]

Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [28:01]

And you might also want to listen to episode 276 of this podcast, where I talk about the history of the fire movement and some of these other options, at least towards the end of it. Hopefully that helps, 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.riskpartyreader.com on the portfolios page. And what a difference another week makes. Especially comparing this past Friday to the one before, which were the complete opposites. Anyway, just looking at where the markets are this year so far. The SP 500 represented by VOO is up 1.29% for the year so far. The NASDAQ 100 represented by the fund QQQ is actually the big laggard right now. It is down 0.76% for the year so far, along with pretty much all of the large cap growth segment of the market. Meanwhile, small cap value represented by the fund VIOV is up 11.43% for the year so far.

Voices [29:17]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:21]

So that segment is one of the best performers. And that shows you what diversification really looks like, doesn't it?

Voices [29:27]

I gotta have more cowbell. I gotta have more cowbell.

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:31]

Of course, our best performer continues to be gold, representative fund. GLDM is up 14.86% for the year so far.

Voices [29:39]

I love gold.

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:42]

Which is actually almost exactly where it was about two weeks ago.

Voices [29:46]

Do you expect me to talk? No, Mr. Bund, I expect you to buy.

Mostly Uncle Frank [29:52]

Long-term treasury bonds represented by the fund VGLT are up 0.6% for the year so far. REITs represented by the fund REET are up 5.25% for the year so far. Commodities represented by the fund PDBC are up 7.62% for the year. Preferred shares represented by the fund PFFV are up 1.9% for the year. And managed futures are also managing to be up. Representative fund DBMF is up 7.48% for the year so far. So it looks like diversification is really paying off so far this year, and that is reflected in these portfolios. Moving to them, the first one is this all seasons portfolio. We keep it around as a reference portfolio. It's only 30% in stocks and a total stock market fund, 55% in intermediate and long-term treasury bonds, and the remaining 15% in golden commodities, which are powering it these days. It's up 0.43% for the month of February. It's up 2.63% year to date, and up 26.52% since inception in July 2020. Moving to these kind of bread and butter 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 the remaining 20% in gold, GLDM. It's up 1.58% for the month of February so far. It's up 6.15% year to date and up 69.36% since inception in July 2020. It's interesting the gold component has risen to nearly 25% of this portfolio. And we had last rebalanced it last July. We will rebalance it again next July. We are currently taking money out of the gold fund whenever we need to take money out of it for distributions. Next one's a golden ratio. This one's 42% in stocks divided into a large cap growth fund, the big laggard, and a small cap value fund. 26% in long-term treasury bonds, 16% in gold, 10% in managed futures, and 6% in cash from which we take all of our distributions. It is up 1.37% from the month of February so far. It's up 5.33% year to date and up 62.64% since inception in July 2020. Next one's a risk parity ultimate, kind of our kitchen sink here. This one's got a little bit of Bitcoin in it. That's really doing something bad in the bed these days. Fortunately, it's only 2% of the portfolio. The portfolio is actually up 1.17% for the month of February so far. It's up 4.85% year to date and up 46.53% since inception in July 2020. Now we do these experimental portfolios.

Voices [32:40]

Pony Stark was able to build this in a cave with a bunch of scraps.

Mostly Uncle Frank [32:47]

Yes, this cave involves leveraged funds, so don't try this at home. First one's the accelerated permanent portfolio. This one is 27.5% in a levered bond fund, TMF, 25% in UPRO, that's a leverage stock fund, 25% in PFFV, a preferred shares fund, and 22.5% in gold, although it looks more like 31% in gold these days. It's up 0.79% for the month of February. It's up 5.51% year to date, and up 30.23% since inception in July 2020. It's highly volatile. But we will be rebalancing this probably next week if the gold percentage continues to hold over 30%, because that's a trigger for the rebalancing of this portfolio. Next one's the aggressive 50-50. 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 an intermediate treasury bond fund. It's up 0.34% for the month of February. It's up 1.45% year to date and down 0.28% since inception in July 2020. It is not benefiting from its lack of diversification.

Voices [34:05]

That's not an improvement.

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:07]

Next one's a levered golden ratio. This one is a year younger than the first six. It is 35% in a composite fund called NTSX, that is the S P 500 and Treasury Bonds, levered up 1.5 to 1. 15% in AVDV, that's an international small cap value fund. 20% in gold, GLDM, 10% in a managed futures fund, KMLM, 10% in TMF, that's that levered bond fund, and the remaining 10% in two levered value tilted funds, UDAO and UTSL that follow the DAO and the Utilities Index. It's up 1.69% for the month of February so far. It's up 6.39% year to date, and up 27.53% since inception in July 2021. And the last one is our newest one, the Opter Portfolio. One portfolio to rule them all, and it is in fact ruling them all. It is 16% in UPRO, that's a levered SP 500 fund. 24% in AVGV, which is a worldwide value tilted fund of all the value tilted stocks. It's 24% in GOVZ, that's a Treasury strips fund, and the remaining 36% divided into gold and a managed futures fund. It's up 1.87% for the month of February so far. It's up 7.72% for 2026 so far. And it's up 38.99% since inception in July 2024. So that's quite a run in a year and a half. But that does indeed conclude our portfolio reviews, which you actually will not be hearing for the next two weeks. We will have one more podcast midweek, and then we will be on hiatus for the week after that. So three missed podcasts in the middle there. It's not that I'm lazy.

Voices [36:07]

It's that I just don't care.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:10]

And just another scheduling note, we are gearing up for this year's economy conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. That'll be March 20th through the 22nd. And since we had a nice little gathering on the Friday afternoon in the Solaire Hotel, I think we'll be doing that again at around 3 o'clock for those of you who are also attending the conference. The conference is sold out, although there might be a few tickets still floating around on a waiting list. But last year we had at least one attendee to our gathering who wasn't even attending the conference. I think it was Eric from Cincy.

Voices [36:46]

Yeah, baby, yeah.

Mostly Uncle Frank [36:48]

Anyway, if you're going to the conference, Mary and I look forward to seeing you there and hopefully seeing you at our little gathering in the bar at the Solaire Hotel at 3 p.m. on Friday the twentieth. But now I see our signal is beginning to fade. If you have comments or questions for me, please send them to Frank at RiskPardyRadio.com. That email is Frank at RiskPardyRadio.com, or you can go to the website www.riskperdiRadio.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 follow, a review. That would be great. Okay. Thank you once again for tuning in. This is Frank Vasquez with Risk Purdy Radio. Signing off.

Voices [37:36]

But he just kept right on strumming my fame with his fingers. Killing me softly with his song. Killing me softly with his song. Telling my full line.

Mostly Queen Mary [39:19]

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.