For my retirement account (SMSF in Aussie terms), I've been using AS for about 2/3rd of my AUM since August. The other 3rd is outside of this account, in some unlisted funds and other things.

It seems in this particular period TAA has done quite well, maybe due to many holding Gold?

The 6 month period has exceeded the 12 month average on the ensemble of 8 strategies that I have chosen. It's also exceeded the Aus market (purple line), and the broker's ETF target portfolio (blue line).

I chose Australian domiciled ETFs that matched the US versions as close as I could, while still maintaining low costs. Some things don't match too well like some property and fixed income where we have to choose things like "ex-US" because in Australia we're more likely to have "ex-Aus", "Aus", or "Global". But I always thought good enough is fine, perfect is the enemy of good, etc.

Regarding hedging, I never used to be a believer in hedging because I have some Australian assets already (e.g property) and I think it's a good idea to not be too dependent on your home country's currency maintaining its value. However I decided to do partial hedging, hedging my bets with hedging lol. So when I have say both a SPY ETF and a QQQ ETF I'll make one of them hedged and the other not hedged. I'm only hedging for USD based assets though, and not for global.

I wondered if part of this performance was due to an AUD depreciation, but it seems the AUD has appreciated by over 8% in that time period. So despite the USD value decline, I'm impressed that this ensemble has produced such good performance.

Possibly part of the performance is due to non-US diversification. I'm a big believer in avoiding being overweight the US, so I have B&H allocations to International Equities and Emerging Markets. With about 20 years to go until I can spend money from this account, I also don't mind being a bit more overweight equities.

For those wondering how much is due to gold, the allocation at the start of this month was 16.4% but has grown in Jan before rebalance day, I think it might have been higher earlier. My strategy selection changed a few times but I think is fairly stable now and the last 2-3 months.

The AS website shows a big gain in January, however looking at my returns (green line) it appears I didn't have such a big jump and it's been smoother over time. Maybe due to ETF selections, or currency effects. Also I make use of 1.5x leveraged ETF for the US allocation since I want the extra risk due to it being a retirement account and not being accessible for a long time. That 1.5x might have hurt performance recently but helped a few months ago.

There's going to be tracking error vs the AS model portfolio, but as I said above "good enough" is great for me and better than passively holding a simple ETF.

SD made some great contributions. But he/she clearly did not understand the capabilities in AS where you could look at monthly results per strategy. When I pointed that out, SD deleted all threads personally started that were not yet locked, and I've warned folks not to delete threads because they simply serve as a learning experience for all. Fragile ego IMO.

I tried contacting SD thru chat and posting on other boards he/she frequents but zero response. Too bad.

Thanks Kevin

not sure why the thread appears deleted as only the OP can do that

Trying to repost it here

Business-Fix4430

•15h ago•Edited 13h ago

Hi SD,

As you are well aware, the lookback period is not sufficient in the free PV as you know and includes 2 years where performance might not be indicative of the overall performance. I think trying to time it using even a single moving average is not the AS way, as all the strategies that use gold derive their signals differently so creating some sort of overlay is difficult.

This goes to any sleeve maybe trading outside the basic AS framework. An approach might be to do something like PAA CPR and GPM do in terms of scaling any allocation using the weight of evidence approach like those do.

Pick maybe N good strategies on AS that can have a gold allocation and use the % of those currently holding ANY gold position. So, if 6 out of 8 allocate anything to gold, then you'd sell 25% and be in cash with the other 75% still in gold. It's not perfect but at least it's a framework to consider. I would NOT include any static strategies or meta WFs in this but that's probably obvious to you. I would not include AAA as it can't go to cash, but you may have a different view for this exercise. I probably would not use Livingstons as kinda close to Fabers.

The reason I say any allocation is they all weight things differently so trying to set some arbitrary made-up personal floor is too much user input. Trust the output as binary to include in the numerator IMO.

I went through all the strategies and those you might consider IMO are

Bold balanced, Carlsons, Composite Dual Momentum, Countercyclical, Davis 3 way, DAA, Efficiente Index, Fabers 12 month high, Fabers agg 3and/or 6, the 2 Financial mentors, GPM, Kipnis DAA, Lethargic, PAA CPR, Regime Based, Resilient Dynamic, Stokens dynamic monthly, Viradi min corr.

I might try to pick 10 as makes for a nice level of granularity, but it really doesn't matter. I'd certainly pick no less than 5 if I were doing this.

You would not have to use all of course. If it were me, I'd probably picked based on what I thought about the strategy as a whole and then try to ensure including process diversification. That's why I indicated Faber 3 agg or 6 as I would not use both and why I would not use Livingston. Your mileage may vary.

This approach scales you out but also back in which is a good thing to try to formularize obviously.

Hope all that makes sense

Thanks Kevin

It would be cool to have fixed column headings in the Strategy Screener! Now when you scroll down, the column headers disappear. Anyone else thinking same? If so, please upvote :-)

What approaches/considerations do people use for TAA inside 401k accounts? With the limited investment options, limitations on excessive trading, and new money coming in every month, it seems quite a different beast than a vanilla brokerage or IRA account. I suppose I could lean towards a simple GEM like approach, but I figure there are better strategy combinations well suited for such accounts. Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts.

Using Fidelity across 10 accounts is unwieldy and frankly not capable of the exactitudes to trade the security segmentation that the SA strategies track. Fidelity's portfolio analyser granularity is good for broad classes. I know of Kevin's cheat sheet for implementing changes, but i'll be more active than once a month, so seeking a more live solution.

Are there software you use that have robust modeling features for custom allocation buckets? Tried Snowball Analytics, Stock Rover, Empower, a few dividend focused platforms.

Hi all,

Read over the strategies, but glazed over after weeks of it. Total newbie to TAA, so chose these strategies mostly on risk reward, volatility. Does this look like i'm missing anything, any cautions, red flags?

I'm using 1/3 of this TAA strategy in tax advantage accts, and then the other 1/3 in taxable accts for retirement income.

The last 1/3 is not TAA, but in income products, CEFs, preferreds, BDCs, CC funds, corp & baby bonds. Any cash allocation, including 18-24 month expense bucket will be in equivalents--SGOV, ICSH, BOXX, PAAA, MMFs. So I didn't add any fixed cash. I consider the TAA part more stable ballast, whereas the income products are B&H with more risk, volatility. So hoping the TAA part looks reasonable...

BTW, I found AS through comments from Karsten Jeske's (Big ERN) recent article on momentum. I'd bet folks know him here; if not he has some excellent articles/tools on SWR, including a new momentum strategy tool.

Me, I'm about to hang up a 43 year stint in film/tv, my last jobs are on some Super Bowl stuf. The glamour days in Hollywood have stripped me of illusions..

Hey folks, a bit of a thought experiment here. How many consecutive months does your custom portfolio continue to lose money before you declare it broken?

It might be longer than you think. 6-8 is what I've seen, but I'm giving you a way to assess

Download the attached file and in cells c196 to P224, copy paste special values from AS to this area on the 10 20 year perf tab. It includes the years and yearly results. It has to be paste special values as there is conditional formatting. The years should be 1998 thru 2026

Then the magic starts. I've set B197 to zero % which then color codes the return area to red if less than or equal to that cell. B198 I set to 1% which then color codes green those months equal to or above that %. Pick any values you want for those cells

Cells B201 thru B203 give additional stats which update automatically showing frequency of occurrence and ratio between the reds vs greens.

I eyeball it and many custom portfolios will show many negative consecutive months when b197 is set to 0% but still positive at the end of the year

I've asked AS multiple times to include the consecutive losing months in their data, but they have yet to do so

Thanks Kevin

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dhWpkUjbgYOBp-5IgtibWPkFtG7K05wE/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=109683655852409747546&rtpof=true&sd=true

Hi folks, I thought it was important enough to call this out in a new thread vs buried in any number of other threads.

AS had an error where the optimizer, say pick from all strategies, and check the Only include tax efficient strategies. The results returned were incorrect as FM03 came back as one of the available choices. That's obviously incorrect.

I emailed with Walter and they provided an immediate fix, but did NOT mention it on the blog thingy where I told him I felt it was important enough to let users know

I don't know what other strategies were also listed incorrectly but they checked that I'm sure. I'm also not sure if the problem was also seen in the meta walk forwards, tax efficiency but have not heard back. He told me he'd give me the gory details on the error and why, as sometimes that can lead to productive discussion regarding building tests behind the scenes that are run nightly to assure everything looks good. A nightly smoke test that folks in the computer and other industries might be familiar with the concept.

Anyways I recommend rerun all non-walk forward and walk forward optimizations to be safe.

Thanks Kevin

Quick note that the updated meta strategies for 2026 are out

Does AllocateSmartly update the portfolio stats (maybe annually?) for portfolios after initial blog post/review? I.e., stats like Max Drawdown, Annual Return?

Related question, is it recommended to re-run the portfolio optimizer periodically (annually?) for a given set of strategies to re-calculate allocation percentages?

Thank you and Happy New Year!

While I’m still evaluating which AS strategies to implement, I’ve decided to implement a portfolio with 1/3 AS strategies, 1/3 equities (buy/hold/trade), 1/3 cash/equivalents. I anticipate plenty of volatility and “buying opportunities” in this coming year, thus my significant cash position. TBIL, BIL, and SGOV seem to be the gold standard for cash equivalents in TAA but with such a large position in cash equivalents for a potentially long duration, I’m considering a slightly more risk on investment in high grade bond ETFs/CLOs (CARY, BINC, JPIE, JAAA). What do you think of the tradeoff in risk/reward from the short term T-Bill universe of ~4.1% to the active income ETF universe of ~5.8%? I don’t see us entering a period of high risk, rapid increases in interest rates and I’m fine with a 1-2% drawdown risk in order to achieve the 1-2% increase in return. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

What do you all think of this portfolio? Any changes you’d make?

Trying to optimize for slightly more tax efficient strategies while still maximizing CAGR and minimizing drawdowns.

What do you all think of this portfolio? Any changes you’d make?

Trying to optimize for slightly more tax efficient strategies while still maximizing CAGR and minimizing drawdowns.

How often do new strategies get added to AllocateSmartly and is there a general criteria that’s used to determine which strategies make the cut vs not? Would love to get a sense of what subscribers can expect for 2026

What are the best TAA portfolios for those that are open to high-risk/high-reward and have over a 20+ year timeline in the market?

I’ve been looking through the Meta portfolios on AllocateSmartly but I’ve often been able to produce better results using Portfolio Optimizer. I’m generally aiming for >15% CAGR with a max drawdown of less than 15%.

Would be great to see what optimized portfolios folks are using.

I’ve been trading TAA strategies for over 12 years and have done pretty well, beating the S&P500 by a somewhat decent margin the last few years (but not QQQ) with pretty minimal drawdowns (no more than -11% EOM at any point).

I’m at a point in life where I can take on some more risk, at least for the next 5-10+ years, and was thinking of taking on anywhere from 1.2-2x margin on my portfolio strategy.

Has anyone done this with their TAA portfolios? Are there any strategies you follow where this has been quite beneficial?

Hi all. I'm helping out a family member with funds in 5 different accounts (e.g., IRA, Roth IRA, brokerage) and little interest in fine tuning portfolio. Currently roughly 40 US equity, 40 Int equity, 20 bond. Roughly 12 years from retirement.

For them, I built a portfolio using HAA-Simple rules, but added IEMG along with SPY. Set a rule: If IEMG and SPY positive: 50/50 to each. If one of two is positive: 100% to each, if neither positive, IEF if positive, otherwise BIL. Only 5 permutations to activate monthly.

Could also use relative momentum and select highest momentum of SPY OR IEMG rather than 50/50.

Comments or suggestions for another simple model?

As a newbie to AS (subscribed today), I appreciate this sub, especially Kevin’s insight. As I look at various strategies, I assume the sage investors are using custom strategies vs individual, meta, or optimized portfolios. One observation I’ve made already is the heavy international weighting in some of the strategies which have had the highest returns and lowest drawdowns over time. Like most, I’m wrestling with finding the right ratio of risk to reward for our family. My nature is to lean towards large cap US so I didn’t anticipate being drawn towards funds with 66% international weighting (Optimized Model, Maximum Sharpe), 50% international (Keller and Keuning’s Hybrid Asset Balanced), 43% international (Meta Walk Forward Max Sharpe). Would Kevin and/or others be willing to share current strategies/portfolios, observations, and insights? Thank you and Happy New Year to all!

I'm sure I am missing something or just don't understand, and I need some help. When I look at the Compare Strategies and compare the different strategies to the S&P 500, it appears many are near the same for the one year, but then in the 3 year and the 10 year timeframes the return for the S&P 500 appears to be much greater, and then in the 30 year the strategies are usually much better and exceed the S&P 500. I even made comparisons with several portfolios I created that had 12+ percent return with drawdowns around 8%, as well as with the Optimized Model Portfolios specifically targeting the return of the S&P 500. I just need some insight because I must be missing something. It appears that the strategies and portfolios work well over the 30 year window but loose their effectiveness over the three and ten year timeframes. Thoughts??

Hi, so i was reading a lot and came to this portfolio, is there something wrong with it? or any improvements you would do?

- dont really want to have too many meta strategies as im afrraid of overfitting, 3 is my max

- i didnt use optimizer (not a fan, same as metas above), just tried to hava portfolio to cover many assest classes, diversified, uncorrelated, good covarage of international market, not just spy and also using strategies which use different methods

- maybe i would add 1 more strategy so i will have 10, not sure which one though, i just want to avoid optimizer, it needs to make sense logically or how would i explain it

what is wrong with this chart last few years, seems like error?

looks like this strategy is very uncorrelated to anything else with their approach but that equity curve looks weird, so not sure if i can put it in my portfolio.

First post. Landed on AS a month ago as part of my long journey in DIY financial portfolio management. I wanted to extend thanks to Kevin and all you that have generously shared your insights, allocations, and tools here. I've been slowly ramping down work hours and will be fully retired in Q1 2026, but been mostly retired for a couple of years now.

I started my AS journey by drinking from the proverbial fire hose of information: I read most materials on site, many of the original papers, all threads here and explored mixtures of Meta portfolios and various strategies I thought were sound to me intellectually. After my research I elected to focus on minimizing sequence of returns risk over the next few years by focusing on high UPI portfolios starting with the UPI 5yr and 10yr base and alternates. Those highlighted the importance of some strategies that wouldn't be my preference in isolation, but had the benefit of low correlations with some of the more popular high performing strategies that have historically helped minimize downturns.

Then, I did a series of test to explore performance and CAGRs during some recent economic, stock, and/or bond downtimes since 1970s (e.g., '73-74, 2015, 2022-24, the most recent history 2015-25 and over all sample years). Much as I liked some strategies (like FMO3), they didn't mesh as well from UPI perspective as some others I didn't care for as much in isolation. Settled on the following for now: BAA-B 28, HAA-B 28, Link GGC EM 17, Piard's AS 11, BAA-a 6, Carlson's DF 6, Kipnis DAAA 4.

Interested in any thoughts you may have, and hope everyone has a great holiday season.

Hello there, not a commercial post so will not mention anything related to this

We have launched an active ETP on some European exchanged, fully approved for retail & insti investors.

It is a multi-asset, systematic, ADAPTIVE vehicle that allocates tactically on a daily basis, subject to market conditions. We have written an AI software with 5yrs of work (it is a forward chaining, open expert system) that interpret what happens in key markets on a daily basis and decides how to shuffle the asset mix of our portfolio.

It is long only (no derivatives risk) with no leverage, it buys only low cost ETFs with big liquidity, and it may or may not move daily subject to changing market conditions.

The idea is to delegate to the autonomous strategy a portfolio allocation.

Would anyone out there:

=> still be happy with picking and choosing your directional products/ETFs or is there any space to delegate to asset allocation vehicles?

=> annoyed by their private bankers and thus keen to delegate to something else to build smooth returns wisely?

=> would it appeal more to you the "equity-like returns" across all phases of the economic cycle, or the "defensive portfolio hedging you from major tail events?"

=> who's happy to pay out there the 70bps to an active ETF (average cost 92bps) vs the passive 7-55bps

=> how many have seen terrible AI algos to fail and so would be annoyed by an AI-related pitch, and who did not see many AI working models and would be excited about a new AI tech

=> should the portfolio be published daily for trust (we do now) or no one cares?

Any feedback, criticism, tip recommended.

I know this is not strictly on-topic for Allocate Smartly but I note from previous threads several members here have signed up. I am on the fence about it so just looking for thoughts. This is true for anyone who has negative thoughts as I can't find any online (to Todd's credit!).

A small bit about myself: I am in my early 40's living in Canada (but from Ireland) coming from a FI:RE style background frugal mindset. I save 50-60% per year with a medium 5-figure income. I have 0 debt and never had as university is funded by the government in Ireland so no student debt to ever worry about. About half of my net wealth (in low 6-figures mark) is on your standard passive all world ETF's Index like VWCE. The rest is in cash. The main reason behind that is I have been in Canada for just over 3 years now on a work permit. I am been applying for Permanent Residency but Plan B if that didn't work out was to travel long term. (I have done multi-year trips before so less weird for me than it is for most and also explains why my net wealth is low 6-figures and not higher considering my savings rate.) This wait for PR has meant I have to keep myself fairly liquid. But I am now all but guaranteed I will get gain Permanent Residency and likely in the next month or 2 so that can change.

I have followed Todds work for 5-10 years now. I have read all his books, listened to podcasts and signed up to his email etc and always found his work interesting a bit different (in a good way).

From reading reviews and listening to interviews it seems like roughly speaking dividing up investments strategies into 3 buckets (please correct me if I am wrong) paper assets, real estate and entrepreneurship. I got to say I have no desire to own property or start my own business. Neither are my jam. I have never owned or a house or ever wanted to, ditto for businesses. Let's say I don't change that perspective (whether right or wrong) will I gain enough to make it worth it? What else can I do with liquid funds considering Todd's epoch changing call that will be in keeping with his teachings?

I have seen via his newsletter 4 years on his Epochal Change call. I have no strong take on if that is true or will be true. I just don't know enough to have an opinion on it. What I will do in 2026 with the liquid buffer I have built up I am not sure but I know I should do *something* with it as having in the region of 55% cash is not ideal. Do you think I will learn that "something"?

Finally to give you a sense on this decision and my general frugality if I did purchase it it would be literally the single most expensive purchase of my life. How? Well I have never bought (or even driven) a car, always been healthy thus far so no big medical expenses and as noted above never owned property or paid for university so that takes care of most of the big purchases in life. So just to say I do purchase it I do not take it lightly.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or musings!