Lazy portfolio

Talmudic Portfolio

Tractate Bava Metzia, ~200 CE

A third in land, a third in business, a third in reserve — from Tractate Bava Metzia, rewritten as 33% REITs, 33% stocks, 33% bonds. More a diversification proverb than a portfolio people still run.

Allocation

33.4%

33.3%

33.4% · US Total Market (business)
33.3% · Real Estate (land)
33.3% · US Aggregate Bond (reserve)

Weighted expense ratio

0.063%

Across the 3 of 3 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
33.4%	US Total Market (business)	VTI	Vanguard Morningstar Total Stock Market ETF	0.030%	$2.32T^†	92
33.3%	Real Estate (land)	VNQ	Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund ETF Shares	0.13%	$66.42B^†	76
33.3%	US Aggregate Bond (reserve)	BND	Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund ETF Shares	0.030%	$389.05B^†	89

† 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.

Editorial take

More a parable about diversification than a serious portfolio recommendation. The one-third REIT weight is high enough to dominate the portfolio's tax profile in a taxable account — most modern implementations use closer to 5–10% real estate.

Try the Talmudic 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 Talmudic Portfolio holdings at a brokerage

All 3 slices in this portfolio trade commission-free at major brokerages.

Open at Fidelity

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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.