Skip to content

Asset Allocation Strategy

Sep 08 2022

It’s Been Ugly Across The Board

  • Sep 8, 2022

Aside from a couple specialized approaches, 2022 is shaping up as the second-worst year for “multi-asset” investing since at least 1973. It seems money printing supported more than just the equity subset.

Jan 08 2021

Bridesmaid Track Record

  • Jan 8, 2021

With last year’s Bridesmaid (REITs) having laid an egg, the long-term “alpha” of the Bridesmaid portfolio narrowed to +3.7% from a bit over +5% (annualized) when we first published this study more than a decade ago.

Jan 08 2021

Momentum Across Asset Classes

  • Jan 8, 2021

In the extreme case where one possesses no other information beyond last year’s total returns, the best single-asset strategy has been to buy the second-best performer (the “Bridesmaid”) and hold it for the next twelve months in hopes that the prior year’s momentum will carry it through. That approach has beaten the S&P 500 by 3.7% annualized over the past 48 years. 

Nov 06 2020

Tough Times For Allocators

  • Nov 6, 2020

Diversified, multi-asset portfolios have been weak performers for many years. The ultra-flexible, macro hedge-fund manager represents one extreme of the asset allocation continuum. At the other extreme would be the passive holder of multiple asset classes. It’s been a tough three years for this breed, too.

Jan 08 2020

Bridesmaid Track Record

  • Jan 8, 2020

Here are the historical annual performance results for the hypothetical Bridesmaid strategy.

Jan 08 2020

Momentum Across Asset Classes

  • Jan 8, 2020

For those not blessed with clairvoyant asset selection ability, we’ve developed a simple single-asset portfolio strategy that’s handily beaten the AANA Portfolio and the S&P 500 over the long-term.

Jan 08 2020

Rewarding “Perfect Foresight”

  • Jan 8, 2020

During the first five years of our career, we worked for a group of stockbrokers who, by each year’s end, seemed to have been gifted with perfect foresight on the major asset markets. Admittedly, we never saw their clients’ actual returns.

Jan 08 2019

Read This Before Taking The “Plunge”

  • Jan 8, 2019

After a bad market year like 2018, there’s a natural instinct for allocators to skew portfolios toward assets with poor recent performance. History suggests, though, that one shouldn’t make a habit of buying an asset on the basis of price weakness alone.

Nov 07 2018

For Asset Allocators, As Bad As It Gets!

  • Nov 7, 2018

During 2018, no major asset class has done well, and in most respects the opportunity-set available this year has been among the worst in the last 50 years.

Jan 07 2017

Asset Allocation: Buy Strength Or Weakness?

  • Jan 7, 2017

The turn of the calendar seems to bring out the inner contrarian in some investors—those who will peruse last year’s list of lagging asset classes looking for rebound candidates.