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Simple Allocation
Simple investment allocation for 
the experienced investor

What we do
  • We have developed a proprietary software model that makes investment portfolio allocation recommendations on a monthly and quarterly basis.
    • The model will chose a maximum of 6 funds, for each portfolio, for investment each month/quarter. 
    • We model portfolios for specific retirement plans, as well as for individual investment accounts.
    • The model will revert to cash if specific statistical indicators (designed to avoid long term bear markets) cannot be met.
  • We publish the current model output for use by individual and professional investors.
  • The site is FREE for individual use! (Investment professionals - see our subscription page for information on private labeling and/or subscriptions.)
How we are different
  • Our model only requires long trades on ETFs and mutual funds; no options, short trades, margin, or other higher risk investments.
  • Our model can be use with any investment account; retirement accounts (401A, 401K, etc.) included.
  • Plan reallocations occur monthly or quarterly.
  • Our model is one model, applied to many different portfolios, that produces consistently good results. 
  • We have NOT programmatically optimized the model to create the "best" results; which frequently leads to models that never deliver.
Our intention is to replace emotionally driven trading, which tends to reduce returns, with a simple algorithm, applied to a diversified portfolio of large, relatively conservative funds, and achieve consistently above average returns while also reducing volatility.
How does Simple Allocation work?
  • You pick a group of funds in which you plan to invest; we call these allocation groups. 
    • We can create an allocation group to match your companies retirement plan.
    • If you are investing in a non-retirement account, you can use any of the retirement plan based groups, or other allocation groups we have created for personal investment accounts. 
  • Each month or quarter, depending on the allocation group, you come back to our website. The page for the allocation plan tells you a maximum of 6 funds recommended by our model for purchase, and the percent allocation for each fund. 
  • That's it! (Though we do recommend using a stop loss; see the getting started page for complete details.)
We have purposely avoided giving you inputs to "tune" the model and analysis. Why? Simple Allocation is designed for people who might otherwise choose a buy-and-hold or lazy portfolio approach to investing, but would like to combine that with a quantitative model based approach designed to increase returns and limit drawdowns. We do the software/model development, analytics, and quantitative analysis, so that you do not have to. Simple.

How does Simple Allocation compare to buy-and-hold?
We model many different allocation plans that can be used in retirement accounts (401A, 401K, etc.) or other investment accounts. Below is an example of one specific plan, ETF Portfolio 001. (See this post from our blog for another comparison to buy-and-hold strategies.)
  • The SimpleAllocation results (bold red line) have lower volatility than most of the individual ETFs in the group.
  • The SimpleAllocation total return is higher than all but one of the individual ETFs in the group.
  • This Simple Allocation plan had about an 18% drawdown during the 2008 financial crisis, compared to over 50% for many of the individual funds.
  • Look through the various SimpleAllocation plans and you will see they generally all have these features; though there is significant variance of both return and volatility across all portfolios. 
  • Prior results are all theoretical; past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

Get started!
If you are a really technical type, you may want to review some details about our model, or you may be interested in reading further details comparing our model to buy-and-hold.

Otherwise, keep on reading to see how you can go about using our model. 
  • Look at our Allocation Plans page to see if your retirement plan is already being modeled, or how to get it added to the plans we do model. Or, take a look at the various plans we have for accounts that are not restricted to specific securities. 
  • Look at our Getting Started page for more information on how to start using Simple Allocation plans.
  • Read our blogs. Topics include: Roth vs. traditional IRA, Using a stop loss when trading ETFs, and more.
Questions? Our quantitative approach to investing is something many people find unusual. Use our social networks, or see the About Us page for an actual email address, to contact us and ask questions and/or get more information.