Portfolios
Twelve portfolios people hold, measured against the three-fund. Eleven are other people's designs, credited to their designers; one, Lean Sixty, is this site's lab's. Every figure is a hypothetical backtest on this site's data, not a forecast.
Before the numbers. One window, Jun 30, 2000 to Oct 9, 2026 (26.2 years), the longest every row reaches. Every row rebalances once a year and pays 10 basis points a trade, whatever its designer's own rule; each portfolio's page says where that differs. Funds younger than the window are extended by older index funds, validated junction by junction (how).
One window is one era. In this one, US stocks returned 8.69% a year and international stocks 5.46%, so a portfolio holding less abroad than the three-fund's two-fifths gained from that.
Fund fees are the weighted expense ratios of the funds each backtest holds. Methodology.
The comparison
Rows are in stock-share order, and the first row is the bar: the three-fund reference mix. Select a column's heading to sort by it.On a narrower screen the table scrolls sideways; the names stay in view.
| Portfolio | Return per unit of risk | Declines | Against the three-fund at its stock share | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Three-Fund (the bar)
Bogleheads structure; this site's weights |
60% | 6.41% | 0.50 | 0.73 | 0.57 | -35.8% | 3.3 yrs | -21.1% | -35.8% | -22.4% | 0.03% | — | — |
| Total Stock Market
A benchmark |
100% | 8.69% | 0.50 | 0.72 | 0.43 | -55.5% | 5.6 yrs | -37.0% | -55.5% | -25.4% | 0.03% | +1.2pp | +2.2pp |
| 90/10
Based on Warren Buffett, 2014 |
90% | 8.10% | 0.51 | 0.74 | 0.45 | -50.1% | 6.0 yrs | -32.7% | -50.1% | -22.5% | 0.03% | +0.8pp | +2.5pp |
| Core Four
Rick Ferri, 2007 |
80% | 7.36% | 0.49 | 0.70 | 0.50 | -47.9% | 3.4 yrs | -29.9% | -47.9% | -24.4% | 0.04% | +0.3pp | −0.6pp |
| No-Brainer
Based on William Bernstein, 2000 |
75% | 6.93% | 0.46 | 0.67 | 0.51 | -44.7% | 3.3 yrs | -26.3% | -44.6% | -21.6% | 0.04% | +0.0pp | −0.1pp |
| Swensen
David Swensen, 2005 |
70% | 7.35% | 0.53 | 0.75 | 0.66 | -43.9% | 3.0 yrs | -25.2% | -44.0% | -23.4% | 0.08% | +0.6pp | −2.2pp |
| Pinwheel
Tyler, Portfolio Charts, 2018 |
65% | 7.73% | 0.57 | 0.84 | 0.81 | -40.5% | 2.4 yrs | -23.0% | -40.5% | -20.0% | 0.11% | +1.1pp | −1.7pp |
| Lean Sixty†
This site's lab |
60% | 8.80% | 0.69 | 1.05 | 0.93 | -29.5% | 2.7 yrs | -23.0% | -29.4% | -28.4% | 0.20% | +2.4pp | +6.5pp |
| Classic 60/40
A benchmark |
60% | 6.98% | 0.57 | 0.85 | 0.68 | -33.8% | 3.5 yrs | -19.5% | -33.8% | -20.9% | 0.03% | +0.6pp | +2.0pp |
| Coffeehouse
Bill Schultheis, 1999 |
60% | 7.30% | 0.56 | 0.81 | 0.79 | -38.3% | 2.5 yrs | -19.1% | -38.3% | -20.2% | 0.05% | +0.9pp | −2.5pp |
| Golden Butterfly
Tyler, Portfolio Charts, 2015 |
40% | 7.84% | 0.75 | 1.16 | 1.37 | -20.7% | 2.3 yrs | -12.6% | -20.7% | -18.5% | 0.12% | +2.2pp | +2.4pp |
| Permanent
Harry Browne, 1987 |
25% | 6.79% | 0.73 | 1.18 | 1.35 | -16.6% | 2.2 yrs | -11.7% | -15.2% | -16.6% | 0.15% | +1.9pp | +2.7pp |
† Rebalanced once a year here, like every row. Lean Sixty's own rule, buy-side bands, is on its page.
What the columns mean
| Stocks | The share in stocks, REITs included. |
|---|---|
| Return a year | Compound annual growth rate over the window. |
| Sharpe | Annualized mean monthly excess return over T-bills divided by the standard deviation of monthly returns. |
| Sortino | Like Sharpe, but divided by the downside deviation: the root-mean-square of monthly excess returns below zero, over all months. |
| UPI | Annualized excess return over T-bills divided by the Ulcer Index: return per unit of drawdown pain. |
| Worst | The largest peak-to-trough decline in value over the window, on daily data. |
| Longest underwater | The longest stretch of trading days spent below a prior peak. Shown in years of 252 trading days. |
| Worst year | The lowest calendar-year return in the window (first and last years may be partial). |
| 2008, 2022 | The deepest decline from a prior peak in each crisis: October 2007 to June 2009, and 2022 to 2023. |
| Fund fees | The weighted expense ratio of the funds the backtest holds. |
| Against the three-fund | The row minus the three-fund at the row's own stock share, in percentage points. A positive worst decline is a shallower one. |
Worst decline against return
The dashed line is the three-fund at every stock share from 20% to 100%: the reference's dial. A point above it and to its right returned more than the three-fund with the same worst decline, over this window.