Lazy portfolio

Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Tyler Larimer, Portfolio Charts (~2016)

A balanced-tilt extension of the Permanent Portfolio: 40% stocks (half total-market, half small-cap value), 40% Treasuries (half long-duration, half short-duration), 20% gold. Aims for similar drawdown protection while capturing more equity-side return.

Allocation

20%

20% · US Total Market
20% · Small-cap value (tilt)
20% · Long-term Treasuries
20% · Short-term Treasuries
20% · Gold

Weighted expense ratio

0.15%

Across the 5 of 5 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
20%	US Total Market	VTI	Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF Shares	0.030%	$2.20T	95
20%	Small-cap value (tilt)	VYM	Vanguard High Dividend Yield Index Fund ETF Shares	0.040%	$94.63B	92
20%	Long-term Treasuries	TLT	iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF	0.15%	$42.91B	81
20%	Short-term Treasuries	SHY	iShares 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF	0.15%	$25.08B	82
20%	Gold	GLD	SPDR Gold Shares	0.40%	$153.51B	73

VYM · A pure small-cap-value fund (e.g. AVUV) isn't in the catalog yet — VYM is a value-tilt large-cap substitute. The factor tilt is partially captured.

Editorial take

A reasonable middle ground for investors who like the Permanent's logic but find pure equal-weight too conservative. The small-cap value tilt is doing real work here — replacing it with another total-market fund collapses the strategy back into something closer to a 40/40/20.

Compare the slices

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

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.