How Long Bear Markets Last: Recovery Times Since 1968
Eight major US drawdowns from the December 1968 peak onward. The median took 31.5 months to reach a new high in nominal price terms and 6...
· 10 min read
Portfolio & Risk | LedgerTouch Intelligence
Diversification in a Crisis: What Actually Worked
Across the six times developed-world equity fell 20% or more since 1990, 10-year Treasuries and Treasury bills carried almost all of the ...
· 12 min read
Volatility vs Drawdown: The Risk You Actually Feel
US stocks in the 1970s and the 1980s had annualised standard deviations of 13.41% and 13.17% — as close to identical as two decades get. ...
· 11 min read
Fund Overlap: Five Funds, 39% in Ten Companies
Five funds — a total-market fund, an S&P 500 fund, a growth fund, a tech fund and an innovation fund — hold 1,533 companies between them,...
· 10 min read
Home Bias: How Much of Your Equities Are Foreign
The United States was 62.09% of world equity value at 30 June 2026; Australia was 1.56%. That single fact makes the home-bias question a ...
· 11 min read
Your House as a Portfolio Asset: Housing vs Equities
Across 16 countries since 1870, housing's real total return of 7.05% a year edged equities' 6.89% with less than half the volatility. Tho...
· 12 min read
Investment Policy Statement: What the Evidence Shows
An investment policy statement is a rule written before the decision arrives. CFA Institute lists 16 elements, CalPERS runs 120 pages, an...
· 11 min read
Portfolio Drift: How Far a 60/40 Wanders in One Year
A 60/40 portfolio left alone ends the year a median 3.2 percentage points off target. But the distribution is lopsided: the biggest singl...
· 10 min read
Rebalancing in a Crash: Evidence From 2008 and 2020
Equities are down 30% and a 60/40 has drifted to roughly 50/50. Moving it back to target beat leaving it alone in both October 2008 and M...
· 12 min read
Risk Tolerance vs Risk Capacity: What Scores Miss
A questionnaire says you are 'moderate'. It's measuring how you feel about risk, not how much of it your plan can absorb, and those answe...
· 10 min read
Sequence Risk: Same Returns, Opposite Outcomes
Run 30 years of real US 60/40 returns forwards and backwards. A $1,000,000 lump sum left alone ends at exactly $5,116,739 either way. Add...
· 11 min read
Three-Fund Portfolio: A Stress Test, 2008 to 2025
Three funds at Vanguard's own 60/40 target weights returned 6.44% a year from 2008 to 2025, or 3.91% after inflation. Nominally 2008 was ...
· 12 min read
The Behavior Gap: What Bad Timing Really Costs
The folklore says your own timing costs you 4% a year. Morningstar's data says 1.2%. A 2026 Financial Analysts Journal paper says the par...
· 8 min read
Rebalancing Frequency: Annual vs 5% Threshold Bands
Over 92 years of Vanguard's data, every sensible rebalancing rule landed within 0.2 percentage points a year of every other one. The choi...
· 8 min read