Lazy portfolio

Permanent Portfolio

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

25% each in stocks, long Treasuries, cash, and gold. Browne mapped those to prosperity, deflation, recession, and inflation. The aim is a small 12-month loss, not a high 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 Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF	0.030%	$2.32T^†	92
25%	Long-term Treasuries (deflation)	TLT	iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF	0.15%	$46.23B	83
25%	Cash equivalent (recession)	SHY	iShares 1-3 Year Treasury Bond ETF	0.15%	$26.28B	83
25%	Gold (inflation)	GLD	SPDR Gold Shares	0.40%	$141.70B	73

† Whole fund: this ETF is one share class of a fund that also sells mutual-fund shares, and the figure covers all of them. Our sources don't report the ETF class on its own.

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 — it trades expected return for downside protection. It shows up most often in capital-preservation contexts (bridge years before retirement) and rarely as a primary accumulation-phase portfolio, because the 25% cash sleeve is a permanent return drag.

Try the Permanent Portfolio in our tools

Tool · Look-through

Underlying holdings of this mix

Every underlying position summed across the slices — true top holdings, country and sector tilt, bond sleeve.

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.