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The Muscular Portfolios Newsletter — No. 12 — Nov. 12, 2018
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StockCharts.com gets muscular
 By Brian Livingston
I'm extremely pleased to report that StockCharts.com — the best platform for free financial graphing with additional expert and pro levels — has invited me to write a twice-weekly column. It's called "Muscular Investing" (a slight name change to distinguish it from my new book Muscular Portfolios). It appears most Tuesday and Thursday mornings in the free section of the site, which is open to everyone.
For an overview of my mission at StockCharts, look at my introductory column. It summarizes on a single Web page my latest research. This inaugural manifesto is profusely illustrated, like the book itself.
My first regular column, a four-part series, reveals the secrets of the well known Bucket Portfolio by Morningstar Inc. The analysis uses 45-year simulations of the actual asset classes used in this retirement strategy, which was developed by the company's director of personal finance, Christine Benz.
I show that the static portfolio, which never changes the percentages it assigns to its nine different index funds, far underperforms the market return. But with one simple tweak, the revised Bucket Portfolio improves by 3½ percentage points a year. That makes a vast difference in an investor's ending wealth.
Please read "Double the Gain of the Morningstar Bucket Portfolio." (See Figure 1.)
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Figure 1. The Morningstar Bucket Portfolio far underperforms the market return. But an easy change massively improves the strategy's financial results.
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When my columns at StockCharts consist of two or more parts, the beginning and ending of every installment will link to the past and future parts. If a future part hasn't been posted yet, the link to it will start working on the date the part is posted. (If you click a link prematurely, you'll see a polite message asking you to wait until the day the desired installment is live.)
With its powerful graphing features, you might think StockCharts appeals only to day traders and other short-term traders. To explore that, I invited viewers of my appearance on StockCharts TV on Nov. 7 to answer a poll. Figure 2 shows that a slight majority of respondents (52%) said they change their investment positions only once or twice a month or less often.
Muscular Portfolios, which require a gradual adjustment in your position no more than once a month, is perfect for these long-term traders. More than 100 million households in the US, UK, Canada, and other countries hold a 401(k) or a similar account. Most 401(k) plans prevent account holders from buying individual stocks — usually only mutual funds and the like are available. Most plans also prohibit their owners from trading more than once or twice a month. These savers are the audience the most in need of a simple growth strategy.
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Figure 2. In an online poll, a slight majority of StockCharts respondents said they trade only once or twice a month or less often. It isn't a scientific sample, but the poll suggests that most StockCharts visitors are not day traders but instead are long-term traders.
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To see all of my StockCharts columns as they appear — there are a grand total of three at this writing — visit the Muscular Investing archive page.
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Yahoo Finance TV showcases some old wisdom
The huge streaming video service, Yahoo Finance TV, interviewed me on Nov. 1 about my book and the likelihood of a bear market. (I believe a bad one will hit us within a year or so, if it hasn't already begun.)
The edited version of the interview provides us with a nice little 5-minute clip on asset-rotation strategies like Muscular Portfolios. Can we expect that just the two asset classes most Americans choose between — US stocks and US bonds — will provide the outsize gains we've gotten used to in the past 10 years? Absolutely not! Investors need other asset classes to take advantage of diversification and momentum (Figure 3).
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Figure 3. Yahoo's Jen Rogers and her two co-hosts lobbed questions at me on investing. I survived the bright lights, none the worse for wear, I think.
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To see the clip, play the YouTube video.
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 Get the book that frees you from Wall Street
Muscular Portfolios has received rave reviews from experts of all kinds:
"This is an amazing book and one which carries my highest recommendation." —DR. HUMPHREY LLOYD, author of While Memory Serves and numerous trading books
To order the book, visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or any bookseller.
"I know of no book for a general investment audience that is more thoroughly researched and backed up by hard data." —MARK HULBERT, founder of the Hulbert Financial Digest
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