Lazy portfolio

Permanent Portfolio

Harry Browne, "Fail-Safe Investing" (1999)

Equal weights to four assets selected to cover the four macroeconomic regimes Browne identified: prosperity (stocks), recession (cash), inflation (gold), and deflation (long-term bonds). Designed to never lose more than a small amount in any 12-month window, not to maximize return.

Allocation

25%

25% · US Stocks (prosperity)
25% · Long-term Treasuries (deflation)
25% · Cash equivalent (recession)
25% · Gold (inflation)

Weighted expense ratio

0.18%

Across the 4 of 4 slices we could price.

Weighted tax efficiency

/100, weighted by allocation. Lower in heavy-bond portfolios.

Slices

Number of holdings — also the number of lots you rebalance.

Implementation

Weight	Role	Ticker	Fund	ER	AUM	Score
25%	US Stocks (prosperity)	VTI	Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF Shares	0.030%	$2.30T	92
25%	Long-term Treasuries (deflation)	TLT	iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF	0.15%	$41.10B	78
25%	Cash equivalent (recession)	SHY	iShares 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF	0.15%	$25.36B	84
25%	Gold (inflation)	GLD	SPDR Gold Shares	0.40%	$130.05B	73

SHY · alternates: BIL, SGOV · 1–3 year Treasuries stand in for cash; modest yield without meaningful duration risk. Permanent purists prefer T-bills (BIL or SGOV) for closer-to-zero duration.

Editorial take

The Permanent Portfolio drags relative to a 60/40 in most environments, and that's by design — you're paying expected return for downside protection. Worth considering for capital-preservation-focused holdings (think bridge years before retirement). Less appropriate as a primary accumulation-phase portfolio.

Try the Permanent Portfolio in our tools

Tool · Placement

Split this portfolio across your accounts

Asset-location optimizer — fills tax-deferred with shelter-priority slices first, Roth with growth-priority next, taxable last. Estimated annual tax drag.

Tool · Backtester

Backtest this portfolio's last 5 years

Monthly total returns rebalanced monthly. Equity curve, CAGR, max drawdown.

Compare the slices

See holdings overlap and cost difference between any two of this portfolio's funds.

Open Permanent Portfolio holdings at a brokerage

All 4 slices in this portfolio trade commission-free at major brokerages.

Open at Fidelity

Affiliate links — opening an account through these earns PlainIndex a one-time referral. Scoring is computed before any affiliate consideration; see our methodology and funding disclosure.

Curated allocation. The funds listed are how this portfolio would be built using the catalog as it stands today; alternate tickers and notes are flagged inline.

PlainIndex publishes data and editorial commentary — nothing here is personalized investment advice. Read the methodology for how the scores referenced here are computed.