But now this brings us to the main point of our discussion with you, which is to get your advice for our viewers about what you consider to be the perfect portfolio. Now we know there's no such thing as perfect, but I suspect that TIFs will play some role in this. What would you say to the typical investor now? Today, looking forward, how should we be managing our wealth? Well, let me try to cover this. You'll be surprised at some of what I've done in the asset allocation chapter in my book a little bit. Because I've come and included this really not a very good answer. I've concluded that regular rebalancing is not terrible, but not necessary. I've come and concluded that a 60-40 portfolio is probably the best option rather than going from 80-20 to 20-80 in a target retirement plan. I may be right now, maybe wrong on that. And I find it something very individual and clearly, I mean everybody knows this intuitively at the beginning. There are no easy answers to this. So I'll come to exactly what I'm doing. But what I did, I got a letter from clearly a young man who was really worried about how he should be investing in what his allocation should be. And he said, you know, the dangerous, risky world out there. And he didn't mention it, but of course he's right. You have potential nuclear war, global warming, much more than just potential. And racial division in the country right now, threats to world trade, and division of wealth all over the world, but most often very heavily in the US, between the halves and the half-naughts. All those things are worth worry about, but I said to him, you don't know. And I don't know what's going to happen to him. The market doesn't know. Nobody knows. So you just have to put them out of your mind and forget it. What you want to think about is how much risk you can afford. And that's very much a personal thing. And it has a little bit to do with what you're investing regularly and things like that. And then I said to him, if it's helpful to you, I will tell you what I'm doing. Now I'm eight years old and have an unusual kind of planning my estate. And I said, I'm 50% bonds and 50% stocks. I don't have to rebalance around that. It just seems to come out that way, particularly in recent years. And it's been higher than that and been lower than that. But right now I'm very comfortable at 50-50. Although I spend half my time worrying that I have too much in stocks. And the other half of my time worrying that I have too little in stocks. I think that's the way most investors feel. They don't know what the right number is and when the market's going up, they say, God, why don't I have more snow more in stocks when it's going to. So you're your own worst enemy in all this. But having some stability without automatically rebalancing, I don't think you need to do that. And it's very clear in anybody understanding it. Connoes certainly understands this. The less you rebalance, the more you're going to have. Because you're always selling the better performing asset. I don't know what it'll do in the long run. But I also look at it as very importantly. And this is kind of an interesting thing. I think the most important thing you need to know about the performance of the stock market in the next 30-40-50 years. Is what is the GDP of the United States going to do? Corporate profits are correlated at 96%. S&P dividends are correlated at 96%. With the GDP of the United States, the GDP doesn't grow quite as fast. But not a big difference. 6.7 compared to 7.5 or something like that. And then they'd be nominal. And so what interests me is in Peter Lynch's book, something about Wall Street, and one up on Wall Street or something. He says there's no number that could interest him less than the GDP number. Is it calling up or dead? And what that is is a statement that the short term is more important than the long term. And I don't believe the short term is more important than the long term. And then you even get in free economics. Those wise guys, they did a nice interview with me. I've heard all of it yet, but I will someday say, pay no attention to the GDP. Well, it's everything. But it's not everything today and tomorrow. The GDP probably rose today about 2,360 to 1% or something, whatever it is. And we don't pay any attention to it. But it all comes down to, for your best portfolio, is are you an investor or are you a speculator? And if you're going to keep changing things, you were speculating because we can't know. If you're going to put commodities in there, the ultimate speculation. It has nothing going for it, no internal rate of return, no dividend yield, no earnings growth, no interest coupon, nothing. Except the hope largely vain probably that you can sell it to somebody else for more than you paid for it. How that could be even considered goals, let's say, an investment. I do not know. So I'd like to take the mystery out of it and say that the perfect portfolio. First, I think for my huge proportion, over 90% or any of the investors, should be limited to marketable securities. They don't need the liquidity today. And we may have too much marketability, and that is too much sensitivity to prices as they changed day by day. But you want to get out of the idea that you always have to do something. And I have said in my books, something happens and Federal Reserve does something. The trader is all at the beginning of the day. I think it's going to cause the market to get out and so they sell and everybody else says, nothing to do with anything for you. And when you hear news and your broker calls up and says, do something, it's just telling my rule is don't do something, just stand there. And it's a lot of the rules that apply to the investment. Not rules that apply to ordinary life. And so don't do something, just stand there. So get a rough idea of what you want to allocate your money to. I do. I'm really entirely indexed and my 50, 50, although all my, I can't give you the proportions, so I don't remember them. But my bonds that are in my retirement plan are bond index funds. And the bonds that are in my personal account are municipal bonds, Vanguard municipal bond, short and intermediate. And so I'm reasonably comfortable with that. So I think I'm too conservative for the average investor. So I'd say the perfect portfolio. And it should be, well, let me just mention one other issue. And try a little bit differently. A Blair Academy, I have a scholarship fund that I'm going to land the manage. And I don't want to spend any time on them. I don't. So here is exactly what I've done on the assumption that nobody will touch it for a long time. When I'm going, I mean, maybe they will, maybe they won't. But what I did, this is probably 10 years ago, we say put half of it and willing to fund a half of it and balance index fund. The idea was not all on balance index fund because there could be things that happen that manage your needs and it's too adjust to. Neither have an international component and that's fine with me. That's, I believe that's the better strategy. So that's, they would be together 90% of the fund. And then against two contingencies, just in case I put 5% in emerging market index and I hope you're sitting now 5% in gold. Really? Yeah, in the event is that a 5% hedge against some kind of catastrophe. Now I wouldn't call that the perfect portfolio. But I mentioned it only because that's one that is distinctive. Meaning you cannot touch it. And at least theoretically can't touch it. It's designed to be held through all extremes. And so that's going to give you with the two balanced funds, roughly 62% in equities, that's going to be with willing and fund more corporate bonds than the index fund has. I think the index is something that we should be very, very careful about because it has the one of a better expression, two damn much in governments. I don't think any individual would have an abond account, 70% in governments and 30% in corporates. Maybe it should be the reverse. I think that makes more sense. Can I prove that? No, I'm sorry, I can't. So it's looking at the low end term, looking at the numbers, looking at cost above all. There's no, there's no ideal portfolio, perfect portfolio that ignores cost. I've seen these articles saying, for example, commodities, no internal rate of return, silly. Including gold, except if nobody's looking and we have something explosive, that will help and probably shouldn't hurt you too much. This portfolio actually is un-rather-well in the last couple of years. And it's fine, the long run. So, you know, I actually may be doing better in my own, but I don't look at my performance because I'm so conservative. I look at the funds, but it's almost all indexed. I do have well-engined funds from those days of Mr. Morgan. And I wouldn't give that up as a sentimental matter, but I should. You