Author: Nicholas

This author has written 39 articles
Read more about the article Why The 60/40 Portfolio Is Not Balanced

Why The 60/40 Portfolio Is Not Balanced

When it comes to the All Seasons Portfolio strategy, or any other risk parity strategy for that matter, one of the fundamental ingredients is how to allocate the capital between assets in the portfolio based on risk rather than capital.

Why this is important, or even why bother doing it at all, is a question I get quite often. I think therefore it is time to have a closer look at risk parity portfolio allocation principles. Here I mean the reason for why the allocation to the assets is based on their risk (volatility) rather than equal weight based on capital.

In this article, for a comprehensible description, we will be examining a simple two-asset portfolio to illustrate the importance of weighting assets based on risk rather than capital. For this example, I will be using a 60/40 Portfolio consisting of 60% stocks and 40% bonds, as this is popularly (and erroneously) considered as a “balanced portfolio”, and as this is a portfolio allocation strategy among both retail and institutional investors.

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Read more about the article Retail Investors’ Irrational Expectations of Risk Parity

Retail Investors’ Irrational Expectations of Risk Parity

What I have observed from discussions with retail investors who are not yet aware of the benefits of risk parity, is that there is a great misunderstand of the goals of risk parity, and incorrect expectations of what such strategies should provide.

When explaining what risk parity is, being a strategy that pieces together risk premiums and returns from a wider array of asset classes, but where the timing of the earned positive returns from each asset are spread out in such a fashion that during all economic regimes, some of the assets will see negative returns, but the positive returns of other assets will offset losses and provide your portfolio with an overall profit.

This means that through proper diversification, on a portfolio level you cancel out much of the volatility inherit in each of the individual asset classes, so that you get a much smoother ride with lower portfolio volatility, but can still expect equity-like returns over time. You should expect rolling hills and valleys rather than mountains and canyons.

But as I have alluded to in recent posts, even though the All Seasons Portfolio strategy and other similar strategies (Golden Butterfly, etc. for example) are rationally the best fit for most investors, during times when the stock market outperforms, it becomes difficult to see your neighbor get richer on the stock market while your safe portfolio lags.

This kind of underperformance fatigue sets you up for a great risk if you abandon the safe strategy for a high-risk strategy when the market crash (the one that you were protected against) occurs.

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Read more about the article Implementing a Strategic Rebalancing Framework to Your Portfolio

Implementing a Strategic Rebalancing Framework to Your Portfolio

It is December, and this is a period when most investors usually end up overseeing their portfolio allocations to start fresh in the coming year, and preforming periodical rebalancing.

While most just rebalance mechanically back to the original asset weights, we will be looking at whether rebalancing can be carried out in a way that improves returns and minimizes drawdowns when compared to both buy-and-hold strategies, as well as periodical rebalancing.

Many investors – both retail investors investing their personal wealth, and asset managers with millions in AUM – usually employ calendar rebalancing of a portfolio. This could be the quarterly rebalancing of a mutual fund, or that the retail investor sits down annually for a few hours during the Christmas holidays ahead of the new year to rebalance the portfolio.

Such periodical rebalancing is built on the fundament of mean reversion. It essentially sells the winners of the past period, and buys the losers. Over time, this is from where a rebalancing premium is captured when your portfolio consists of several uncorrelated assets. All Seasons Portfolios are a typical such portfolio that benefits from the rebalancing premium.

However, Man Group has researched strategic rebalancing techniques that could mitigate drawdowns through more bespoke methods for rebalancing. Their discussed techniques cover both the periodical rebalancings, as well as mid-period rebalancing when assets’ weights in portfolios deviate by more than a predetermined amount (rebalancing spans).

The retail investor should therefore consider the implications of trend and momentum both for periodical rebalancing and ad hoc rebalancing when using rebalancing spans, and implement a strategic rebalancing approach to further improve risk-adjusted return by minimizing drawdowns and thus the overall portfolio volatility, and potentially capture additional percentage points of return from trend.

In this post, we will be looking at a few ways of how to implement strategic rebalancing for your portfolio. I will also especially highlight the ways I have taken strategic rebalancing to heart in my All Seasons Portfolio.

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Read more about the article There Impact of Interest Rate Risk When Investing

There Impact of Interest Rate Risk When Investing

2022 was a shaky year for capital market.

Interest rate risk is an important type of risk to be aware of as an investor, as it affects stocks and bonds indiscriminately. That is especially harmful for investors only investing in stocks or using a "balanced" stock-bond portfolio.

We will therefore be taking a closer look at what it is and whether there is anything we can do as investors to protect our wealth and portfolios against it.

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Read more about the article Getting started with the All Seasons Portfolio

Getting started with the All Seasons Portfolio

So excited to get this project of mine started and to be honest, I have been looking forward for a while to write this first blog post, and I am slightly nervous about it too. It is Christmas time 2018 when I begin to write this and am embarking on this journey to start my own All Seasons Portfolio from scratch, and to help as many as possible with starting to save and to invest, I will share my journey to try to inspire, educate, and hopefully, get you started as well on switching your spending habits or non-interest bearing bank accounts to accumulating enough wealth to feel secure.

You may have been spending Christmas traveling to relatives or setting up for the holidays at your own home, I have spent this time with my family as well, but escaped a few hours to look into how to put the All Seasons Portfolio into practice, but I'll come to that slightly further below. The weekend 22-23 December has been amazing to take a break from the day job and finding new inspiration - the extra days off during Christmas are great for just such a purpose. Try it out next time yourself to find new ways of improving yourself.

I first came across the All Seasons Portfolio from Tony Robbins' book Money Master the Game (where, to be honest, most readers first encounter this investment strategy), where Ray Dalio elaborates how his jaw-droppingly successful asset management firm, Bridgewater Associates, manages their Pure Alpha fund.

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Read more about the article Insights – Convex Returns: The Key to a Diversified Portfolio

Insights – Convex Returns: The Key to a Diversified Portfolio

Diversification is the fundamental feature of portfolio management and asset allocation, but is there more to it than just measuring correlation and calling it a day?

In this article, we look more closely into the concept of convex return relationships between assets, ensuring that diversifiers perform and thus protect against the drawdowns of other assets in the portfolio.

Convex diversification profiles play an important role in the All Seasons Portfolio for making drawdowns shallower and creating opportunities for earning rebalancing premiums.

Continue ReadingInsights – Convex Returns: The Key to a Diversified Portfolio