Opening Quotes And Welcome

Voices [0:00]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a 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 [0:37]

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.

Mostly Uncle Frank [1:14]

Top men.riskpartyRadio.com. Inconceivable! All thanks to our friend Luke, our volunteer in Quebec. We'd be helpless without him.

Voices [1:36]

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, alright?

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 [1:53]

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.

Mostly Queen Mary [2:05]

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 [2:14]

But now onward, episode 522. Today on Risk Party Radio, it's time for our weekly portfolio reviews of the eight sample portfolios you can find at www.riskparty radio.com on the portfolios page.

Voices [2:28]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:35]

Yes, 2026 does seem to be shaping up to be the year of the cowbell.

Voices [2:40]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:45]

We'll get to that later. Before we get to that.

Voices [2:49]

I'm intrigued about this. I was saying email.

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:54]

And

401k Bond Options And Asset Swaps

Mostly Uncle Frank [2:55]

first off. First off, of an email from Tim.

Voices [3:01]

Let's say. Oh I know. How about the new student, Tammy? Timmy!

Mostly Uncle Frank [3:08]

And Timmy, right?

Mostly Queen Mary [3:11]

Frank and Mary. I am back with my intermediate term risk parity portfolio segment. Uh what? As I wrote last time, I built a golden butterfly style portfolio, but come tax time, VGLT and SHY had already shot off some unwanted ordinary income, so I set off to incorporate an asset swap strategy. My 401k has a low-cost bond index, so I initially put a full 40% of my intermediate segment to account for my VLGT and SHY in the bond index, replacing some of my 401k S P 500 fund and bought VOO on the outside. Then I was working with my friendly neighborhood artificial intelligence to build an investor policy statement to help build a framework for my wife's transition to work she wants to do instead of work she has to do.

Voices [4:08]

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

Mostly Queen Mary [4:14]

After writing down my portfolio allocations, I realized I may have made this as simple as possible and then a little simpler, to 11 with my bond combination, so I started asking questions.

Voices [4:26]

The numbers all go to 11.

Mostly Queen Mary [4:29]

Unfortunately, my 401k only had two bond options. One was a really ugly actively managed bond option that Gemini warned had speculative activity which would increase stock market correlation. That's not an improvement. The other was a bond index I used, which was intermediate, 5.8 years, and only half government bonds. Gemini really liked the idea of using an available stable value fund as an SHY surrogate, resulting in a split between the two funds.

Voices [5:06]

No 9,000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.

Mostly Queen Mary [5:18]

Unfortunately, the stable value had an expense ratio of 0.24%, which would make it the most expensive fund I would own, all to underperform three-month T-bills. Gemini excitedly declared it would have a blended expense ratio of 0.13% when you account for the index's 0.02%. And even with the split, I'm not getting all the VGLT characteristics I wanted. My question is: given my options, should I split these assets in my 401k or leave it alone? Should I not even asset swap unless I want to use the Roth IRA space? I am hesitant to lose out on all those tax-free gains. It's currently all equities. This feels long. Sorry if I got merry bugging. I did listen to Ron DMC when I wrote it, just in case. Thanks, Timmy.

Voices [6:11]

Mary Marin, why you bugging?

Charity Campaign And Donor Perk

Mostly Uncle Frank [6:20]

Well, first off, thank you for being one of our donors to the Father McKenna Center and to Fairfax Casa, our charities that we support. As most of you know, we don't have any sponsors on this program, but we do have these two charities. Right now we are in a campaign to raise money for the Father McKenna Center. It is the top of the t-shirt campaign, which we described in detail in episode 518. We have $25,000 in matching funds that were put up by two of our listeners, Matthew 63 and 4J. And we are doing our best to match that, and maybe even a little bit more. The Father McKenna Center supports hungry and homeless people in Washington, DC. And full disclosure, I am the chairman of the board now of the Father McKenna Center.

Voices [7:04]

Well the frickin' da!

Mostly Uncle Frank [7:09]

But if you give to the Father McKenna Center or to Fairfax Casa, you get to go to the front of the email line as Tim A has done here. And I will drop that link again in the show notes. But now getting to your email, just to put some context around this for our listeners, what Tim is doing is something that our adult children do with a risk parity style portfolio, which is to use it as an intermediate accumulation portfolio. So you might have an emergency fund that's just in cash, and then you have your long-term investments, which are probably all stocks or almost all stocks, but then frequently people want to accumulate for some kind of intermediate goal. And it might be a house down payment or any number of other things that you might be buying in, say, three to seven years, but you don't want to leave all that money in cash because you do want some growth out of it. And so these risk parity style portfolios are actually really good for that as well as being retirement portfolios, because they tend to have shorter and shallower drawdowns than other kinds of portfolios. And that is what Tim has been doing, and he's been doing that in a golden butterfly kind of portfolio, as he writes here.

Voices [8:24]

Yes, of course. What? I think maybe Timmy is suffering from something called attention deficit disorder, or ADD. It's very common in kids his age. Oh! Timmer! Well, that certainly would explain it. It should be easy enough to find out. They have tests for that kind of thing now. Okay.

Mostly Uncle Frank [8:43]

So

Simple Fix For Limited Bond Menus

Mostly Uncle Frank [8:44]

you're dealing with these limited options in your 401k for this bond allocation, which in a golden butterfly would be half of a long-term treasury bond allocation and half of a short-term treasury bond allocation. And I see your quandary.

Voices [9:00]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit on Philomet.

Mostly Uncle Frank [9:04]

I honestly think I would just put it all in this intermediate bond fund, which is a compromise between the two ends of duration there. I think overall that's probably slightly more conservative than the split between the long-term treasury bonds and the short-term treasury bonds in the sample portfolio. And given what you're using this for, I'm not sure it matters that much that you actually have much of a very short-term bond allocation, which looks like cash in this circumstance. I would not be worried as much about the expense ratios here. They all seem pretty small. And for very short-term instruments, particularly if you're looking at things like stable value funds, what's more relevant about those is their overall return compared to, say, a money market or other savings account or short-term instrument, because that's really what these things are designed to mimic anyway. I suppose the other part of this is the sizing issue, because if this whole account, this intermediate accumulation account is not that large, then maybe you just leave it all on the taxable side anyway and just pay the taxes on it. There's not enough detail here for me to make any definitive statement about that. But given what the ultimate purpose of this is, which is probably to spend it in some period of time, I'm not sure it really makes all that much sense to be doing asset swaps just to save a little bit on taxes. Of course, if it's hundreds of thousands of dollars, my answer would be different.

Voices [10:42]

That is the straight stuff, oh funk master.

Mostly Uncle Frank [10:45]

But I would really take that into account and then also take into account what is the real purpose of this fund. I'd be hesitant to use Roth space to put any bonds in. Given you're still a young man. And I think I'd rather have the Roth growth in there with equities than saving a little bit on taxes right now. Oftentimes when you have two decent options and it's not clear which one is better, the solution or the better solution is to simply do some of both. So another idea here would be to say take half of that bond allocation, put it into the 401k in an asset swap, but leave the rest of them just outside and bite the taxes on those. Then maybe that kind of compromise solution would suit you here. Of course, it is a little more complicated, but I believe you can handle it despite any infirmities you may have.

Voices [11:44]

Well, Timmy, I just don't know what to do with you. You're getting very poor marks in school, and the teachers are complaining that you aren't paying attention.

Mostly Uncle Frank [11:52]

So sorry I couldn't answer your question definitively, but hopefully this helps a little bit. Say hi to Gwen for me. And thank you for your email.

Voices [12:08]

Dude, this is a no-brainer. This year's Battle of the Bands winner and the band that gets to open for Phil Calls a la in this second off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [12:21]

Second

Why Bonds And Gold Have Jobs

Mostly Uncle Frank [12:22]

off, we have an email from Avid Listener.

Voices [12:25]

Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately.

Mostly Uncle Frank [12:27]

I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob. An avid listener, right?

Mostly Queen Mary [12:32]

Howdy, Frank. Thanks for the podcast, and I especially like the way you look at things from a simple and practical perspective.

Voices [12:40]

I'm not a smart man.

Mostly Queen Mary [12:42]

Can I ask you a couple of questions about things which I haven't heard discussed on the podcast? One, what do you think about MTBA as a substitute for the bond portion of a portfolio? It seems to offer a yield that is 1 to 2% higher than long-term treasury bonds without taking on additional default risk, since Fannie Mae is also implicitly backed by a U.S. government guarantee. A higher yield with equivalent risk seems like a better alternative to U.S. Treasury bonds. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. 2. What do you think of royalty companies as a substitute for the gold allocation in a portfolio? You have a gambling problem. For example, Franco Nevada, FNV, is one of the largest precious metal royalty companies. Since 2000, it has averaged a 17% annual return with a relatively strong correlation to gold, 0.7, and a relatively weak correlation to the SPY, 0.2. Therefore, it largely performs the same function of diversification as gold, but with significantly higher returns. What do you think about taking some portion of the gold allocation and investing in a basket of the largest precious metal royalty companies such as WPM, FNV, and RGLD for the potentially higher yield? Thanks for everything you do.

Voices [14:10]

I picked the wrong weight, quick sniffing blue.

Mostly Uncle Frank [14:18]

All right, avid listener. Sounds like you are looking for shiny objects.

Voices [14:26]

And that's a hell of a price to pay for being stylish.

Mostly Uncle Frank [14:30]

I think you need to step back here and think about why you are holding a particular asset in a portfolio before you jump to the conclusion that you are holding these things for returns.

Voices [14:43]

You know, I had an idea like that once, a long time ago. It was a jump to conclusions mat. You see, it would be this mat that you would put on the floor and would have different conclusions written on it that you could jump to.

Mostly Uncle Frank [15:06]

Because you that is the implicit assumption you're making that what we're doing here is having some different kinds of assets and then trying to maximize returns within each category. That is not the right way to approach this at all. And in fact, is not what we're doing at all. So you need to step back and understand what we're doing here. What what would you say you do here? And this goes to that four-quadrant model I've talked about in many other episodes where we are trying to make sure we have a collection of assets in the portfolio that respond well in all different kinds of economic weather, whether that is involving increasing growth and increasing inflation, decreasing growth and decreasing inflation, or some combination thereof. So we know in broad strokes that 70% of the time the stock market is going up, and in the 30% of the time it's going down, usually half of those are recessions, and then half of those are all other bad things, like stagflationary environments like 2022. We also know that of the kinds of common assets we might choose, that investments in the stock market in index funds are going to be essentially the highest growth engines that we have because the base rate returns for those are 10 to 11% before inflation and 7 to 8% after inflation. Now bonds are very low return assets by their nature, that we would only expect even intermediate and long-term treasury bonds to yield between 4 and 6% over long periods of time. And shorter-term bonds are going to yield less than that, and then after inflation, they're barely yielding anything at all. So you're not holding bonds at all for their returns.

Voices [16:54]

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders.

Mostly Uncle Frank [16:57]

And that begs the question then, why are you holding bonds at all in one of these kind of portfolios? And the answer to that is you're holding them as recession insurance. That is their sole purpose in one of these kind of portfolios. That's why we're not holding 40% in bonds. We're holding a much lower allocation to them because they're only serving that purpose as recession insurance. Now, what that means is we need to choose bonds that actually go up in capital value during recessions, that they have a almost certain propensity to do that. And what kind of bonds do that? There are long-term treasury bonds and intermediate-term treasury bonds for the most part, that when you get into a recession, like it's 2020 or 2008, the big one, or 2001 to 2003, or every other recession since the 1950s, at least, since World War II, those kind of bonds have gone up in value during a recession. And that's why we're holding them because the idea is the 15% of the time when there's a recession, those bonds will go up in value. We will sell them and then buy things that are down because stocks go down about 90 plus percent of the time during recessions. So we're not holding bonds for returns. If we wanted more returns, we'd hold more stocks or other things. You wouldn't hold bonds for returns. So there's no point in going into your bond allocation and fiddling around with it to try and squeeze out extra returns. It's kind of a fool's errand. The real question is: would these mortgage-backed securities like MTBA fund, which you've chosen, have the same characteristics of going up in value during a recession? And the answer is no, that's not what they do, at least not these intermediate to short-term duration funds like MTBA or an older one is MBB. You can see that by running MBB back in time and seeing what did it do in 2020 and what did it do in 2008. What you see it's a very kind of inert bond fund that doesn't do much of anything at all. And since it cannot perform that function, it does not have a role in this kind of portfolio because we're not holding the bonds for returns.

Voices [19:11]

You had only one job.

Mostly Uncle Frank [19:14]

So looking at them today and saying, well, this bond fund has a higher return than this bond fund is a useless exercise. And you shouldn't be doing it.

Voices [19:24]

Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [19:25]

This is a bad process, essentially, that a lot of level two investors engage in because a level two investor is always looking for the next shiny object and then saying, Oh, let's throw this in the shopping cart, and maybe it'll work better, without really thinking about why you're holding the asset class to begin with.

Voices [19:44]

You had only one job.

Mostly Uncle Frank [19:46]

And this is what happens when instead of looking at the overall portfolio, its purpose, then looking at asset classes, and only after that looking at funds. If you're looking at this the other way around, where you're just running around picking funds, you end up picking funds that actually don't perform the role that they're supposed to perform in the portfolio because you are fixated on something like short-term returns and not on the actual role or purpose of the asset in the portfolio.

Voices [20:14]

You had only one job.

Mostly Uncle Frank [20:16]

Which leads us to your second question, which is a similar question, which is you're trying to now monkey with one of our alternative assets and eke out extra return out of that. Okay, what are the general qualifications that we have for our alternative assets? They're basically two. The first one is the most important that whatever these alternative assets are, they should be uncorrelated with both stocks and bonds. That's the number one characteristic we're looking for because we are worried about environments like the 1970s and like 2022. So you want something with zero correlation so it has a chance of performing well in that kind of environment, like managed futures or gold. The other characteristic you want to have all out of your alternative assets is they need to be generating some returns, but you're not expecting them to generate stock market-like returns. So you want them to be better than bonds, but they don't need to be as good as stocks in terms of overall returns. And so the kind of assets we end up choosing tend to have long-term return profiles of like seven to eight percent nominal, which are essentially between stocks and bonds. So, what I did is I just went and plopped these three tickers, WPM, FNV, and RGLD, into test folio along with gold and the S P 500 itself to do a comparison. What you see is these funds are extremely volatile. They're like twice as volatile as either gold or the stock market, but they don't have twice the returns. So they are actually inefficient in terms. Of what you were trying to do, you'd probably be better off just putting leverage into the fund and using that to up your gold allocation if that's what you wanted to apply the leverage to. Something like GDE, that one of our listeners is very happy with, might be a better choice here than that than these. Because ultimately they have lower Sortino and Sharp ratios than gold. They also have the problem is that they're not really that correlated with gold itself. It's only about 0.6 in terms of a positive correlation, but they are more correlated with the stock market, which tells me that you're probably better off just investing more in the stock market and less in gold in terms of an allocation than using one of these, because they really don't have that zero correlation with the stock market that you'd like them to have. You'd also compare this with something like GLDX, which is a gold miners fund. And what you find is that these types of funds tend to behave kind of like a leverage version of gold, but they have a stock market risk component to them, which kind of makes them awkward in one of these kind of portfolios. So while you could use one of these things, they're just better solutions that involve putting leverage in the portfolio or more stocks in the portfolio than choosing any of these. You also have the idiosyncratic risk of having individual companies here, which is one of the reasons they're so volatile. So, no, I can't see that using one of these is ultimately going to be the best thing for a portfolio because of the other options there, which are to either put leverage into the portfolio or just holding more stocks and less gold in the portfolio. But again, the real problem here is your process is backwards, that you are not considering why the asset is in the portfolio and then running around with a shopping cart saying, Oh, this looks good, why don't I throw it in here as a substitute for some other ingredient? And it just doesn't work that way.

Voices [24:02]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [24:06]

If your recipe calls for baking soda and you're using baking powder, yeah, it might work, but it's not the same thing. And if you really want to compare these things, what you need to do is compare them within a portfolio, construct a whole portfolio where you are swapping the assets in and out, make sure that you have something like at least 25 years of data, and you'll get an idea as to how it affects the overall portfolio, because that's really what matters here, not whether something has a better return than something else, just when you look at them side by side without looking at their relationships to the rest of the assets in the portfolio and how that all works together. What you should basically never do is just look at something off the shelf, try to compare it to something else in your portfolio on some superficial basis like short-term returns, and think that it can be used as a substitute because you're not doing the real analysis that you need to do to make that determination. And if you'd like to learn more about the four quadrant model, there are plenty of episodes where we talked about that. Most recently episodes 498, 500, 502, and 504. And check out a lot of the links in the show notes because that's where the real meat of that is. There was also an interesting interview on Schwab's weekly podcast hosted by Liz Ann Saunders, who is the chief of investment over there, and she was interviewing Keith McCullough of Hedgeye, who's one of these people that tries to market time with the four quadrant model. But that is frequently what people who think they can market time these days are doing, which I think is too complicated and unnecessary for a long-term investor in particular. But it is an interesting interview to me, partially because it is on Schwab's channel and they are obviously a very mainstream broker. They already incorporate things like factor investing into their model portfolios and what they would recommend to their clients. But you'll hear from listening to that that Liz Ansaunders also understands and approves of things like the four quadrant model, and I would not be surprised if Schwab moves more in that direction in the future. Because investing really has changed in the past ten to fifteen years with many more asset classes becoming easily available through ETFs. So I'll link to that in the show notes and you can check that out too. And hopefully that all helps. And thank you for your email.

Voices [26:52]

Last off.

Mostly Uncle Frank [26:54]

Last

Stop Optimizing Cash Yield

Mostly Uncle Frank [26:55]

off of an email from Aaron.

Voices [26:58]

Now hey, hey, Ron. Where are you?

Mostly Uncle Frank [27:03]

This is actually a different Aaron than the one we've been answering most recently. And Aaron Wright?

Mostly Queen Mary [27:10]

I have a question for you, Frank. I know you always talk about not trying to time the market. Does that logic hold up with short-term bonds slash HSA accounts slash tips? I feel like you want to shift to what is best and time the market. If you have 20% in the last three, can't you optimize for the best rate? I'm saying this from a perspective of an 80% equity and 20% cash portfolio.

Mostly Uncle Frank [27:36]

Always money in a banana stand. Well, Aaron, this is actually a more interesting question than you may know. I frequently see this on boards where people are running around looking for different places to put cash to eke out a higher yield out of it. Whether they're looking at high-yield savings accounts or money markets or short-term bond funds, I mean like ultra-short-term ones that invest in T bills and things.

Voices [28:04]

We don't have the money pop.

Mostly Uncle Frank [28:08]

That exercise is largely a waste of time. Because once you've found something that is essentially paying close to short-term T bill rates, you're not really going to eke out much more besides that. And if it's important to you, what that really is a symptom is that you're holding too much cash.

Voices [28:27]

There's $250,000 lining the walls of the banana stand.

Mostly Uncle Frank [28:32]

Because if you're holding 20% in cash, what is the purpose of that? Did you see the memo about this? That is not an investment. Putting money in savings accounts and very short-term things is not really investing. It's certainly not long-term investing.

Voices [28:50]

Yeah.

Mostly Uncle Frank [28:50]

Didn't you get that memo? The reason that you would hold short-term things are there's basically two reasons. One, you plan on spending it in the near term. And the second is as insurance. That's what an emergency fund effectively is. It's self-insurance. And it makes a whole lot of sense to raise the deductibles on all your real insurance, your auto and home and stuff, and use an emergency fund to fill that gap because it's more efficient. But you're using the cash as a form of insurance in that circumstance. Cash as a long-term investment is just a terrible investment. It just gets eroded by inflation. Did you get that memo? And you see that in any kind of portfolio construction that if you put more than 10% in cash in a portfolio, it just tends to drag down on the overall long-term performance of the portfolio. So my reaction to your question is can you market time by moving your cash around? Yeah, you can do that, but that is a symptom that you're holding too much cash if that really makes a big difference in moving the needle. One condition and one term. All right. Free banana whenever I want. Single dip. Double dip. But I'll take one shake. Because you're not holding tens of thousands of dollars in cash, you're holding hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. And that is usually a problem. And uh I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo. Okay. And this is often faced by people who are essentially moving from being like level one kind of investors to level two kind of investors. There is a tendency for people to think that the only kinds of long-term investments they can have are either putting money into their retirement accounts like 401ks and IRAs, unfortunately, usually investing in things like target date funds that are dragging down their returns. And besides that, they take all of their money and they shove it in savings accounts. That's just not a good way of investing. That excess money outside of retirement accounts needs to go into real brokerage accounts where you can invest the money. And any short-term cash can just sit in a money market in those accounts. And then you're not fiddling around with all this stuff that's not moving the needle.

Voices [31:11]

Forget about it.

Mostly Uncle Frank [31:13]

So I would be really asking yourself, do we really need to have 20% in cash in this portfolio? I can't see any reason to be holding that unless you plan on spending it in the near term, or you're inadequately insured on your house or your car or something. I would reduce that exposure to 10% or less, and then take the other 10% and either put it in equities if you're in an accumulation phase, or if you're moving towards decumulation or you just want to take less risk, then you would put it in an alternative asset like managed futures or gold, because then at least you're going to get some more returns out of that than holding piles of cash. You could also put it into treasury bonds themselves, but then you really are looking at a retirement kind of portfolio there. But I can tell you nine times out of 10, or probably 99 times out of 100, if this is important to you, if you are asking this question, should I move my cash around to see if I can eke out a better yield, which is usually taxable, so it's not even that great of a yield to begin with, the answer is you're just holding too much cash and you need to fix that problem, and then this won't be an issue at all. But if you want to move your short-term money around from account to account, I mean, be my guest, it's just not really a meaningful activity. It's not investing, but an activity that unfortunately for many people substitutes for investing because it makes them feel like they're actually doing something meaningful, but it's not.

Voices [32:43]

That's not how any of this works.

Mostly Uncle Frank [32:46]

Because the differences between these types of accounts is frequently fractions of a percent. Especially if you're talking about comparing a money market fund to any of these other short-term instruments. So my advice is to step back, look at what you're really doing overall, what your goals are, and whether this is really serving you. Because there's very few circumstances where holding 20% in cash is of any service to any long-term investor. So hopefully that helps. And thank you for your email.

Voices [33:20]

And so Michael, his son, and his brother together enjoyed the cathartic burning of the banana stand. There was money in that banana stand. Well, it's all gone down to after $250,000 lining the walls of the banana stand. Why don't you tell me that? How much clearer can I say? There's always money in the banana stand!

Weekly Sample Portfolio Performance

Mostly Uncle Frank [33:44]

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.riskpartyview.com on the portfolios page. Well, it wasn't all that fun.

Voices [34:02]

That's so funny, I forgot to laugh.

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:06]

Just looking at these markets. The SP 500 represented by the fund, VOO, is now up 7.53% for the year so far. The Nasdaq 100 represented by QQQ is now up 15.28% for the year so far. So actually dropped considerably last week. Meanwhile, small cap value represented by the fund, VIOV, is our star performer now this year. It's up 20.82% for the year so far.

Voices [34:34]

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

Mostly Uncle Frank [34:38]

Gold, represented by the fund at GLDM, is now taking it on the chin and is our worst performer this year so far. My how things change. Gold is down 5.58% for the year so far. Long-term treasury bonds, represented by the fund VGLT, are up 1.77% for the year so far. REITs, represented by the fund of REET, are up nicely at 13.98% for the year so far. Commodities represented by the fund PDBC have also come down with the price of oil.

Voices [35:08]

I'm an oil man.

Mostly Uncle Frank [35:10]

That fund is now up 19.77% for the year so far. Preferred shares represented by the fund PFFV are up 2.04% for the year so far. And managed futures are managing to be up. DBMF is up 8.26% for the year so far. Moving to these portfolios, first ones, the all seasons. This is 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 gold and commodities. It is down 1.8% for the month of June. It's up 4.31% year to date and up 28.59% since inception in July 2020. Moving to these kind of bread and butter portfolios, first one's gold and 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 the remaining 20% in gold, GLDM. It is down 1.35% for the month of June. It's a 5.25% year to date, and up 67.92% since inception in July 2020. Next one's a golden ratio. This one's 42% in stocks divided into a large cap growth fund and a small cap value fund, 26% in long-term treasury bonds, 16% in gold, 10% in managed futures, and 6% in cash and a money market fund. It's down 2.3% for the month of June. It's up 5.09% year to date, and up 62.25% since inception in July 2020. Next one's Risk Parity Ultimate. I'm not going to go through all 12 of these funds. It's kind of our kitchen sink portfolio. But it's down 2.1% for the month of June. It's up 5.34% year to date and up 47.21% since inception in July 2020. Now moving to these experimental portfolios that all involved leveraged funds. Don't try this at home.

Voices [37:07]

You can't handle the gambling problem.

Mostly Uncle Frank [37:10]

First one's the accelerated permanent portfolio. This one is 27.5% in TMF, that's a levered bond fund. 25% in UPRO, levered SP 500 fund, 25% in PFFE, a preferred shares fund, and 22.5% in gold. It's down 4.27% for the month of June. It's a 4% year-to-date and up 28.36% since inception in July 2020. Next one's the Aggressive 5050. This is the most levered and least diversified of these portfolios and worst performer by far. 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 down 2.86% for the month of June. It's up 5.28% year to date, and up 3.48% since inception in July 2020. Next one's the levered golden ratio. This is a year younger than the first six. It is 35% in NTSX, that's a composite fund of 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 KMLM, it's a managed futures fund. 10% in TMF, it's a levered bond fund. And the remaining 10% divided into UDOW and UTSL, which are levered Dow Index and Utilities Index funds. It's down 2.91% for the month of June, so 5.71% year-to-date and up 26.71% since inception in July 2020. And the last one and newest one is the Opter Portfolio, one portfolio to rule them all. It's a return stack portfolio that is 16% in UPRO, that's a levered SP 500 fund. 24% in AVGV, that's a worldwide value tilted fund, 24% in GOVZ, a Treasury Strips Femaining 36% divided into gold and managed futures. It's down 4.39% for the month of June. It's up 7.83% year to date, and up 39.13% since inception in July 2020. And that concludes our weekly portfolio reviews.

Voices [39:24]

This is pretty much the worst video ever made. Never question Bruce Dickens.

Mostly Uncle Frank [40:03]

But you

Crystal Ball Closing And How To Reach Us

Mostly Uncle Frank [40:04]

know what our crystal ball always says.

Voices [40:06]

We don't know. What do we know? You don't know. I don't know. Nobody knows.

Mostly Uncle Frank [40:12]

And so we'll leave it at that. But now I see our signal is beginning to fade. If you have comments or questions for me, please send them to Frank at RiskPartyRadio.com. That email is frank at riskparty radio.com. Or you can go to the website www.riskparty radio.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 Parity Radio. Signing off.

Voices [40:49]

One, two, three, four.

Mostly Queen Mary [41:46]

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.