Risk Parity Radio
Risk Parity Radio is a podcast about investing located at www.riskparityradio.com. RPR explores risk-parity style portfolios comprised of uncorrelated or negatively correlated asset classes -- stocks, selected bonds, gold, managed futures, and other easily accessible fund options for the DIY investor. The goal is to construct portfolios that are robust and can be drawn down on in perpetuity, and to maximize projected Safe Withdrawal Rates regardless of projected overall returns.
Risk Parity Radio
Episode 424: Interactive Brokers Margin Accounts, Gold ETFs On 1099s, BTAL And Portfolio Reviews As Of May 16, 2025
In this episode we answer emails from Yangon, The Value Stock Geek, and Graham. We discuss the ins and outs of margin accounts at Interactive Brokers, some annoyances with gold ETFs and 1099s, and BTAL vs. treasury bonds.
And THEN we our go through our weekly and monthly portfolio reviews of the eight sample portfolios you can find at Portfolios | Risk Parity Radio.
Additional Links:
Father McKenna Center Donation Page: Donate - Father McKenna Center
Tyler On The Security Analysis Podcast: Tyler (@PortfolioCharts): The Amazing Power of Uncorrelated Assets
Analysis Of BTAL vs. SPY vs. TLT With Correlations: testfol.io/analysis?s=jAQO2TjzA
Paper Re Stock Market Volatility And Treasury Bonds (C. Moise): Flights to Safety, Volatility Risk, and Monetary Policy by Claudia E. Moise :: SSRN
Breathless Unedited AI-Bot Summary:
Diving deep into the financial weeds, Frank tackles several practical questions that impact do-it-yourself investors managing their own portfolios. What begins as a detailed exploration of Interactive Brokers' margin loan program reveals valuable insights about using portfolio assets as collateral, the tax deductibility of margin interest, and how to monitor your account to avoid margin calls.
The conversation shifts to an unexpected tax headache many gold ETF investors face: those annoying tiny distributions that clutter 1099 forms while providing minimal value. Frank compares how different brokerages handle these transactions, offering practical advice for simplifying your tax reporting experience. For those weary of manually entering dozens of nickel-and-dime transactions each tax season, this segment provides welcome relief.
Perhaps most valuable is Frank's thoughtful analysis of asset correlations and why treasury bonds remain irreplaceable in risk parity portfolios despite recent correlation changes. "Correlations are not magical and they're not random," Frank explains, dismissing the notion that we've entered a "new paradigm" where traditional diversification no longer works. He articulates why correlation changes are tied to macroeconomic conditions and why treasury bonds still serve as essential recession insurance that alternatives like BTAL cannot replace.
The weekly portfolio review brings welcome news as most sample portfolios show positive performance, with gold continuing its strong 2024 despite recent pullbacks. Small cap value remains the year's underperformer, while the diverse range of portfolio strategies demonstrates how risk parity principles can adapt to different investor needs.
Whether you're considering margin loans, puzzling over gold ETF tax statements, or questioning the role of treasury bonds in today's market environment, this episode delivers practical wisdom for navigating these complex investment waters. Frank's straightforward approach strips away the mystique surrounding these topics, empowering listeners to make more informed decisions with their portfolios.
A foolish consistency, is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer, a different drummer.
Mostly Mary:And now, coming to you from dead center on your dial, welcome to Risk Parity Radio, where we explore alternatives and asset allocations for the do-it-yourself investor, Broadcasting to you now from the comfort of his easy chair. Here is your host, Frank Vasquez.
Most Uncle Frank:Thank you, Mary, and welcome to Risk Parity Radio. If you have just stumbled in here, you will find that this podcast is kind of like a dive bar of personal finance and do-it-yourself investing.
Voices:Expect the unexpected.
Most Uncle Frank:It's a relatively small place. It's just me and Mary in here and we only have a few mismatched bar stools and some easy chairs. We have no sponsors, we have no guests and we have no expansion plans.
Voices:I don't think I'd like another job.
Most Uncle Frank:What we do have is a little free library of updated and unconflicted information for do-it-yourself investors.
Voices:Now who's up for a trip to the library?
Most Uncle Frank:tomorrow. So please enjoy our mostly cold beer served in cans and our coffee served in old, chipped and cracked mugs, along with what our little free library has to offer.
Voices:Welcome.
Most Uncle Frank:Which means it's time for our weekly portfolio reviews of the eight sample portfolios you can find at wwwriskprioritycom on the portfolios page.
Voices:Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.
Voices:Well, before we get to that, I'm intrigued by this how you say emails.
Most Uncle Frank:And First off say emails, and first off, first off, we have an email from Yangon and it's got poof and Yangon writes Hi Uncle Frank and Aunt Mary.
Mostly Mary:Thank you for continuing to share your knowledge and wisdom. I was wondering if you could give a lecture on your favorite brokerage Interactive Brokers and its margin loan program to me and fellow listeners, because I might have a gambling problem.
Voices:Unlike any schooling you've ever been through before. At times, you may feel that you have found the correct answer. I assure you that this is a total delusion on your part.
Voices:Well, you have a gambling problem.
Mostly Mary:A little backstory. I had about $200,000 in IBKR Pro account, which comprises mostly VTI and some small individual stocks, in the beginning of the year, which gave me an access to $100,000 in margin loan without selling any stocks.
Most Uncle Frank:Ah the sweet smell of an all-day sucker.
Mostly Mary:In February, a real estate purchase opportunity popped up in my local town and on February 26, I took out about $90,000 in margin loan to make a cash offer, thinking that a 10% cushion would be enough to avoid margin calls.
Voices:One minute you're up half a million in soybeans and the next boom. Your kids don't go to college and they've repossessed your Bentley. Are you with me?
Mostly Mary:VTI was trading at $290 a share that day. Well, a lot has happened in the US market in the following two months, with VTI bottomed out at $244 a share on April 8th so far in 2025. In those two months my margin loan to value ratio went from 40 plus percent of the portfolio value to 60 plus percent loan to value of the portfolio. I thought the margin call was coming when I saw 0.00 in cash available for withdrawal, assuming margin loan in my withdrawal screen. Luckily, looking at the year-to-date statement, there is no realized gain or losses, so my understanding is that no margin calls happen in April. Honestly, it's a bit of a lucky mystery to me. With that, here are my questions. 1. My understanding is that Interactive Brokers uses my stock portfolio as the collateral for taking out money with margin, just like a house is collateral for a mortgage. Is my understanding correct? 2. When do Interactive Brokers start selling my stocks? Did they have a specified percentage for margin loan to value that they start selling off my investment portfolio? How come I did not get the margin call on that day? Does that have anything to do with stocks having a huge comeback on April 9th?
Mostly Mary:Three in the monthly statement I see an accrued interest, but I have not made any deposit yet. Is there a monthly minimum payment amount, like credit card bills or monthly mortgage, or do they accrue until I pay it back or margin calls occur? Four do dividends and sales of stocks automatically go to pay off the balance or does it get reinvested if you're setting to set to reinvest? Five I moved my assets from another brokerage to IBKR within the last year and I know I have not explored all the features yet. Besides the margin, loan rates and its presence in foreign countries, are there any other benefits for DIY risk parity style investors to hold long term assets and interactive brokers? I have no interest in trading options or Forex. I know I asked a lot of questions. I just don't want to fly solo and need someone watching my back at all times. Thank you and have a great day. Yangon.
Most Uncle Frank:No more flying solo.
Voices:You need somebody watching your back at all times.
Most Uncle Frank:Well, before we get to your questions, I wanted to thank you for being a donor to the Father McKenna Center. As most of you know, we do not have any sponsors on this podcast, but we do have a charity we support. It's called the Father McKenna Center and it supports hungry and homeless people in Washington DC. Full disclosure I'm on the board of the charity and am the current treasurer, but if you give to the charity, you get to go to the front of the email line, which is a couple months long now. So it may be worth it to you and I'll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo.
Most Uncle Frank:Okay, and there are a couple ways to do that. First, you can go to the Father McKenna website itself on the donation page, which I'll link to in the show notes. Or you can go to the support page at wwwriskparryradarcom and sign up for Patreon and give that way. Either way, you'll get to go to the front of the email line.
Voices:That is the straight stuff. Oh funk master.
Most Uncle Frank:Just make sure you let me know in your email that you have given to the charity and either way you'll get to go to the front of the email line as soon as my crack team finds your email.
Voices:We have top men working on it right now. Who Top?
Most Uncle Frank:men. Well, this is a very good series of questions about margin accounts and margin accounts at interactive brokers in particular, because this can be a very useful tool for a lot of people in their retirement scenarios, particularly if they have a large taxable account. So, addressing your questions in order, the first one is whether the stock portfolio you have acts like collateral for a mortgage for the margin account, and the answer is yes.
Voices:Yes.
Most Uncle Frank:And it includes whatever else you have in your account there. So it includes the bonds and all other assets that you might have there. And this is actually a reason you might not mind having some bonds or something that generates ordinary income in a taxable account, because if you are paying margin interest, that interest is tax deductible or offset against the ordinary income generated by the account and you use IRS Form 4952 to report that and take advantage of that. So any margin interest you pay can be tax deductible if you structure things in the right way.
Voices:That's the fact, Jack. That's the fact, Jack.
Most Uncle Frank:But yes, whatever is in that portfolio, in that account, is collateral for the margin loan. Your second question is when would interactive brokers start selling your stocks? When would interactive brokers start selling your stocks? Well, the way a margin call works is if you exceed, or I should say if you have not enough money in there to support the margin in the account, then you will get what is called a margin call and interactive brokers will send you a message and it will say you have a margin call and you need to either put some more money into this account to satisfy that or we're going to sell some of your assets and usually that occurs within a day or two's time. It's usually about a day. Do you think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys?
Voices:Forget about it.
Most Uncle Frank:But you have to be taking some serious margin at interactive brokers to trigger a margin call, because they do give you a very expanded margin level, which is usually several times the nominal account size. So the reason you did not get a margin call on April 9th is that you are not actually taking that much margin, given their limits there, and they do have some of the largest limits in the industry. Oh, mr Marsh, don't worry, we can just transfer money from your account into a portfolio with your son and it's gone. Your third question is whether there is a monthly minimum payment on the accrued interest in the margin account, and the answer is no. That's not the way this works.
Mostly Mary:That's not how any of this works.
Most Uncle Frank:It's simply if you do not maintain enough collateral in the account to support what is being borrowed, you'll get a margin call and they just keep adding the margin interest to that over time.
Voices:It's like you're unraveling a big cable knit sweater that someone keeps knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting, knitting.
Most Uncle Frank:So there are no minimum payments. Your fourth question was whether the dividends and sales of stocks automatically go off to pay off that balance, and the answer to that is yes as a practical matter. Now, if you didn't have a margin account and you weren't taking any margin, that money would go into a settlement account and it would just sit there and earn some interest. But if you are taking margin, that money is going to be first credited against the margin that you're taking, the loan that you're taking, before it would go into a settlement account. Now, whether it would get reinvested if you had set it to reinvest, I'm not sure. I think it still would. Basically, it would get reinvested if you set it to reinvest. I'm not sure. I think it still would. Basically, it would go into the margin account briefly and then get reinvested according to your instruction, and so you'd be taking the same amount of margin. But I've turned off all reinvestments for our accounts in retirement because it's inconvenient. It creates a number of other transactions. Because it's inconvenient, it creates a number of other transactions. I'm probably going to be spending some of the money anyway and then we can just use it to rebalance. So it's actually a big inconvenience to be having things reinvested in retirement if you're managing the account anyway and taking drawdowns. And your final question was whether there are any ancillary benefits to this, because you haven't explored all the features yet. And yes, there probably are, although I don't sit around comparing where you were before to where you are now. But Interactive Brokers is designed to be the lowest cost and most efficient brokerage for traders and people who run family offices, people who manage a lot of money. So basically, almost whatever is legal to be done in a brokerage account, you can do it at Interactive Brokers and probably more efficiently than you can do it somewhere else. I know they do have trading platforms if you're interested in that, but a lot of the features of it are not that useful for somebody who's just managing a simple account and not trying to have a whole lot of transactions.
Most Uncle Frank:Just a couple more comments on the margin accounts themselves. You can see what those are and what's going on in there. You shouldn't be waiting for your monthly statements. If you have questions about this, you should just go log into your account or download their app and use that and look at your balances and you can see there how much is in margin, how much you have available in margin before you would get a margin call and all of that kind of data so that you can manage your account properly. So do not be waiting for monthly statements from there. Go and log in there and see what's there.
Most Uncle Frank:I do find that the tax statements and other reports you can generate out of interactive brokers tend to be a whole lot more useful than something you might be able to get at, say, like Fidelity or something like that.
Most Uncle Frank:Their 1099s are better structured. They give you 8849s Hopefully I'm getting that number right for other transactions in there. They're good about telling you what qualifies for Section 1256 treatment as far as your taxes are concerned, and you can also generate a report that shows you when short-term gains are going to become long-term gains, and you can do that from the report section at the website. We've been using that as our primary taxable account since about 2013, I think, and they've been very helpful and have a lot of features that we, frankly, do not have any use for, since we are not day traders or something like that. I will tell you one annoyance that I've had with them is that to donate shares out of my account there, I need to fill out a form for each one of those things and upload it, which seems kind of primitive in the era of the 2020s, although I know they just want to be careful to make sure that they aren't sending their clients shares off to some scam artist.
Voices:Am I right or am I right, or am I right, right, right, right.
Most Uncle Frank:But, as you can imagine, since we've held gold ETFs there for over a decade and we like to do some charitable transactions, it is most convenient these days for us to donate shares in gold etfs than anything else I love gold and take full credit for the deduction and avoid all the taxes and that's the way, uh-huh, I like it and just one other note or observation, that it is actually very difficult to calculate what exactly the margin is going to be on a particular portfolio because it varies asset to asset depending on what kind of asset it is and its volatility.
Most Uncle Frank:But that information is always reported and you can find quite easily in the balances section of the reports if you go to the interactive brokers website or use the app. But those are very good questions and thank you for asking them because I think others who listen to this podcast probably have similar questions or wonderings you are talking about the nonsensical ravings of a lunatic mind.
Most Uncle Frank:So thank you for the support of the Bother McKenna Center and thank you for your email. Bow to your sensei. Bow to your sensei. Second off, Second off. We have an email from the Value Stock Geek.
Voices:Surely you can't be serious. I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
Most Uncle Frank:And the Value Stock Geek writes.
Mostly Mary:Hey, frank, hope you're doing great. Quick one for you that might be useful for the audience. I hold gold ETFs in my taxable accounts and Schwab is my broker. This year my 1099 was littered with a bunch of tiny distributions, nickel and dime stuff. These aren't even cash distributions. I think it's an odd way to account for expense ratios when the funds sell gold, which is apparently a monthly event. Now I've held gold ETFs for years and never saw these charges on SGOL until this year. And never saw these charges on SGOL until this year and with GLDM I only got hit once before. To keep it simple, I just recorded them all as gains with a cost basis of zero. My annoyance with this is not about the money, as it's a very small amount. It's the hassle of manually entering a dozen tiny transactions on my tax return for each ETF in each taxable account. What guy in a suit?
Voices:No, it's a tax collector. Hide us SpongeBob.
Mostly Mary:So here's what I'm wondering Are these annoying little distributions a Schwab thing, or am I getting hit with them no matter where I go? Is there another broker I could use that wouldn't list all of these transactions on my 1099? Would love your take.
Voices:This is gold, Mr Bond. All my life I've been in love with its color, its brilliance, its divine heaviness. I welcome any enterprise that will increase my stock.
Most Uncle Frank:Well, before we get started on your question here, and just in case listeners don't know, the Value Stock Geek has a nice blog and he has a podcast called the Security Analysis Podcast that I have appeared on. But, more importantly, Tyler from Portfolio Charts has appeared on and I will see if I can link to that in the show notes and he is the author, or founder, if you will, of the Weird Portfolio which is also featured at Portfolio Charts, if you want to check that out.
Voices:You're insane, Goldmember.
Most Uncle Frank:But he has been paying attention to us for a good number of years here and we greatly appreciate his presence us for a good number of years here and we greatly appreciate his presence.
Voices:We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
Most Uncle Frank:So, yeah, I'm also dumbfounded by some of these things that appear on 1099s, and I do have the same issue with Fidelity's 1099s, where there's a series of de minimis transactions reported which I can tell you, my accountant effectively ignores and does this summary thing when he does the Schedule D and supplemental form reporting. But yeah, I think this is brokerage to brokerage, because I don't get these sort of things on my 1099 from interactive brokers, for example. So I'm not sure what the de minimis level is and whether it's just a computer generating things out of these things. But yeah, I mean, these are like penny transactions that are reported on a monthly basis and they make no sense to me at all.
Voices:I don't understand. I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation? Yes, we do.
Voices:Unfortunately, we ran out of cars but the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservations I know why we have reservations I don't think you do, but yeah if you do.
Most Uncle Frank:But yeah, if you do want to avoid them, I would move to Interactive Brokers. That's all I can tell you Because I've never had them report these kinds of transactions in my 1099s from Interactive Brokers. Not going to do it Wouldn't be prudent at this juncture. Hopefully that helps and thank you for your email.
Voices:Would you feel better if you knew one of my secrets? Don't gross me out. No, we're not talking gross here. No, it's just. It's just embarrassing. This information cannot leave this room, okay. It would devastate my reputation as a dude. No problem, I've never bagged a babe, I'm not a stud. I got the rep in sixth grade and it, like I don't know it, stuck with me. I'm still on hold. Look, I appreciate you not laughing at me, okay, I'm sorry, that's not what I meant.
Voices:Last off.
Most Uncle Frank:Last off of an email from Graham.
Mostly Mary:And Graham writes any risk parity style portfolio, but nowadays the correlation between them is higher than before positive, not negative. You've talked about BTAL before and I was looking at that. It looks to be the new negative correlation champ. I know it's relatively new and tweaked in 2022, but do you think we should consider it a core instead of treasuries? How's your experience been holding it in the risk parity ultimate portfolio? Here is a link to a recent correlation test comparing it with treasuries and the S&P Graham.
Most Uncle Frank:Well, the short answer to your question is no. You should not consider BTAL as a substitute for treasury bonds. There are a couple reasons for that. We did analyze BTAL in detail back in episode 114.
Most Uncle Frank:And just to remind people what it is, since we haven't talked about it in a while, BTAL is a long short fund and so it goes long value stocks and short growth stocks, stocks and short growth stocks, which tends to actually give it about a zero return over time. So you are really using it as a hedge, if anything at all. I'll link to the test folio analysis since it came into being in about 2013,. But the returns are essentially zero.
Most Uncle Frank:Of course, during that time we had growth stocks greatly outperform value stocks and I'm sure it would look a whole lot different if you looked at it from the period of the year 2000 to the year 2010, and you'd think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But it is really a hedging strategy, whereas bonds you expect to have a positive return over time. Now, as to its negative correlation recently, yeah, it generally is negatively correlated with the stock market, whereas bonds are positively correlated sometimes and negatively correlated at other times. But I think it is folly and a form of market timing to be chasing changes in correlations, because correlations do change all the time, but they are primarily based on macroeconomic factors. Namely, is growth in the economy declining or is it increasing? And is inflation in the economy increasing or declining? In the economy increasing or declining? Because what treasury bonds really represent in a portfolio is recession insurance.
Voices:You know, I got friends of mine who live and die by the actuarial tables and I say, hey, it's all one big crapshoot.
Most Uncle Frank:anywho, For those times when inflation is going down and growth is going down. So that's a 2008 scenario. The last time we saw that was early 2020. But you usually see it a couple times a decade. We have not really seen it since 2020, which leads people to believe that this time is different.
Voices:What he means is Old Testament, mr Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff Exactly.
Most Uncle Frank:But I assure you, the next time there's a recession, you will see negative correlation between treasury bonds and stocks spring back into form. And there is a nice paper that I've cited to several times. It's a very technical paper about stock market volatility and treasury bonds, but there is a nice figure in the appendices of it which shows the history of correlations between treasury bonds and the stock market, going back to the 1950s. And what it shows you is basically, every time there's a recession, the negative correlation springs back to life. Recession, the negative correlation springs back to life, and then in positive inflationary environments, you see more positive correlations between stocks and bonds. Correlations are not magical and they're not random and they don't just show up and say, oh, this time it's different and we're in a new paradigm and now the correlations are going to be like this for so many years. That's not the way it works.
Mostly Mary:That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.
Most Uncle Frank:The way it works is the assets are responding to the overall macroeconomic conditions in a probabilistic way. So it's not a certainty, it's a probability. So do not think for one minute that the correlations over the past one year, three years, five years or even ten years are necessarily going to tell you what the correlations between two assets are going to be in the future. The only really good information we have about that is knowing which of these assets perform well or poorly in these economic environments as described by growth and inflation. So no, I don't think BTAL is going to be a substitute for treasury bonds, because it does not appear to have a positive return over time which treasury bonds do, and it is not clear or certain that it will have the insurance quality that treasury bonds do in a recessionary or depressionary environment, which is ultimately why you were holding them in the first place.
Most Uncle Frank:And as to your final sub questions, how was our experience in holding in the risk period ultimate portfolio? It's really kind of meh. I would say it's meh. It doesn't add a whole lot, it doesn't take away a whole lot. It looks good. At some points in time, particularly when you saw the stock market declining this year, we used to hold some of in our personal portfolio, but we got rid of it because it just didn't seem to be worth the space that it was taking up. So I don't think it's a bad idea, but I'm not sure it's a good enough idea for you to include it, and I would not consider it to be a substitute for treasury bonds in a portfolio.
Voices:That and a nickel. Get your hot cup a jack squat.
Most Uncle Frank:Hopefully that helps and thank you for your email.
Voices:Now we're going to do something extremely fun.
Most Uncle Frank:And the extremely fun thing we get to do now is our weekly portfolio reviews. Of the eight sample portfolios you can find at wwwriskprioritycom on the portfolios page, and it was a fun week for most of the assets.
Voices:It's the happy, happy, joy, joy song Happy happy, joy, joy. Happy happy joy joy. Happy happy joy joy. Happy happy joy joy. Happy happy joy joy. Happy happy joy joy. Happy happy joy joy. Happy happy joy joy. Happy happy joy joy joy.
Most Uncle Frank:Looking at the markets, s&p 500, represented by VOO, is up 1.74% for the year. I haven't seen that since about February. The NASDAQ 100, represented by QQQ, is up 2.16% for the year. Small cap value, represented by the fund VIOV, is still the worst performer this year. It's down 8.49% for the year. Followed by gold, which is still the best performer for the year, even though I think it had the worst week in about six months or so. Representative fund GLDM is up 21.64% for the year.
Most Uncle Frank:Long-term treasury bonds, represented by the fund VGLT, continue to make us snooze. They are up 0.6% for the year. Reits, represented by the fund REET, are up 3.83% for the year. Reits represented by the fund REET are up 3.83% for the year. Commodities, represented by the fund PDBC, are down 1.92% for the year. Preferred shares, represented by the fund PFFV, are up 0.32% for the year and managed futures are still managing to lag. Representative fund DBMF is down 3.03% for the year.
Most Uncle Frank:Moving to these portfolios, these sample portfolios, first one's a reference portfolio called the All Seasons. It's only 30% in stocks. It's got 55% in intermediate and long-term treasury bonds and the remaining 15% in gold and commodities. It's up 0.6% month to date. It's up 2.32% year to date and up 11.51% since inception in July 2020.
Most Uncle Frank:Moving to the bread and butter portfolios, first one's golden butterfly. This one's 40% in stocks, divided into a total stock market fund and a small cap value fund, 40% in treasury bonds divided into long and short, and the remaining 20% in gold. It's up 1.23% for the month of May, it's up 3.55% year-to-date and up 38.68% since inception in July 2020. Next one's a golden ratio. This one is 42% in stocks and a large cap growth fund and a small cap value fund, 26% in long-term treasury bonds, 16% in gold, 10% in managed futures and 6% in cash in a money market. It's up 2.02% month to date, it's up 2.14% year to date and up 32.74 percent since inception in July 2020. Moving to this kitchen sink portfolio, the risk parity ultimate, this one has some BTAL in it.
Voices:Uh what.
Most Uncle Frank:But I'm not going to go through all 14 of these funds. It is up 1.81 percent for the month of May. It's up 2.14 percent year to date and up 22.07% since inception in July 2020. Now moving to these experimental portfolios, which all involve levered funds. Don't try this at home.
Voices:You have a gambling problem.
Most Uncle Frank:First one's the accelerated permanent portfolio. This one is 27.5% in a levered bond fund TMF, 25% in a levered stock fund UPRO, 25% in PFFV, a preferred shares fund, and 22.5% in gold. It's up 0.3% for the month of May. It's up 1.93% year-to-date and up 2.98% since inception in July 2020. I thought we were going to have a rebalancing here, but since the stock market recovered, we are out of rebalancing territory. We do look at these on the 15th of each month to determine whether they should be rebalanced or not, at least these experimental ones. Next one's the aggressive 50-50. This is the least diversified and most levered of these portfolios and the worst performer by far. It is essentially one half stocks and one half bonds, but it's got 33 percent in a levered stock fund at upro, 33 percent in a levered bond fund tmf, and the remaining third divided into a preferred shares fund and an intermediate treasury bond fund. It is up 2.4% for the month of May. It's down 3.65% year-to-date to down 15.14% since inception in July 2020.
Most Uncle Frank:Moving to the levered golden ratio, this one's a year younger than the other ones. It has 35% in a composite levered fund called NTSX that's the S&P 500 and Treasury bonds levered up 1.5 to 1. 20% in gold GLDM, 15% in a international small cap value fund, avdv, 10% in KMLM, which is a managed futures fund, 10% in a levered bond fund, tmf, and the remaining 10% in two levered funds UTSL, which follows utilities, and UDOW, which follows the Dow. It's up 1.88% month-to-date. It's up 4.39% year-to-date, but down 0.22% since inception in July 2021. And the last one is our newest one, the Optra portfolio, a return-stacked portfolio, one portfolio to rule them all. It has 16% in a levered stock fund, upro, 24% in a worldwide value fund called AVGV, 24% in GOVZ, which is a treasury strips fund, and the remaining 36% divided into gold and managed futures. It's up 2.84% month-to-date. It's up 2.63% year-to-date and up 5.62% since inception in July 2024. Still not a year old yet, and that concludes our weekly portfolio reviews, boring A much pleasanter week than many this year so far.
Voices:Oh, how convenient.
Most Uncle Frank:And what will next week hold? Well, we can ask our crystal ball.
Mostly Mary:My name's Sonia. I'm going to be showing you the crystal ball and how to use it, or how I use it.
Most Uncle Frank:What does our crystal ball always tell us about what's going to happen in the future?
Voices:We don't know. What do we know? You don't know, I don't know, nobody knows.
Most Uncle Frank:And so once again, we have the same reading.
Mostly Mary:That's not an improvement.
Most Uncle Frank:But now I see our signal is beginning to fade. If you have comments or questions for me, please send them to frank at riskparityradarcom. That email is frank at riskparityradarcom. Or you can go to the website wwwriskparityradarcom. Put your message into the contact form and I'll get it all that way. If you haven't had a chance to do it, please go to your favorite podcast provider and like subscribe. Give me some stars, a follow, a review, that would be great Okay. Thank you once again for tuning in. This is Frank Vasquez with Risk Party Radio.
Voices:Signing off the little critters of nature. They don't know that they're ugly. That's very funny, a fly marrying a bumblebee. I told you I'd shoot, but you didn't believe me. Why didn't you believe me? Happy, happy, joy, joy. Happy, happy joy, joy. Happy, happy joy, joy. Happy, happy joy, joy. Happy, happy joy, joy. Happy, happy joy, joy. Happy, happy tax or legal advice.
Mostly Mary:Please consult with your own advisors before taking any actions based on any information you have heard here, making sure to take into account your own personal circumstances.
