Are you able to construct a 40/30/30 portfolio with ETFs?

From January to December 2022, the Vanguard Balanced ETF Portfolio (VBAL), which holds a 60/40 combine, misplaced 15.04%, practically as a lot because the 16.88% decline posted by the 100%-stocks Vanguard All-Fairness ETF Portfolio (VEQT). The issue wasn’t the shares; buyers ought to anticipate volatility with them. It was the bonds. 

As rates of interest spiked to fight inflation, the bond part of VBAL was hit exhausting. Its higher-than-average intermediate length (a measure of fee sensitivity) meant that costs fell extra sharply than shorter-term bond holdings may need. This caught many conservative buyers off guard, significantly those that believed mounted earnings would offer ballast in a downturn.

In response, many portfolio strategists started proposing a brand new mannequin: the 40/30/30. That’s 40% equities, 30% bonds, and 30% alternate options. 

Whereas establishments and advisors have entry to classy non-public alternate options to make this work, the query is whether or not Canadian retail buyers can replicate the same construction utilizing publicly listed ETFs. Right here’s my take, and a few steered ETFs to acquire publicity to the choice area.

What’s the 40/30/30 portfolio?

The 40/30/30 portfolio is a conceptual framework that modifies the standard balanced portfolio by carving out area for various property. The thought is to introduce a 3rd asset class that behaves otherwise from the opposite two. 

In intervals like 2022, when each shares and bonds declined collectively as a result of rising inflation and rates of interest, conventional diversification methods failed. The additional alternate options sleeve is designed to protect capital in instances when the opposite two pillars of a portfolio transfer in tandem.

It’s not a one-size-fits-all prescription. The 30% allotted to alternate options can differ extensively relying on the portfolio supervisor’s preferences. In most institutional and advisor-led implementations, that portion might embrace:

1. Hedge fund-like methods resembling long-short fairness, managed futures, lengthy volatility, and market-neutral approaches that depend on quantitative fashions and multi-asset publicity to generate absolute returns.
2. Exhausting property or digital shops of worth like gold, commodities, or cryptocurrencies resembling bitcoin, sometimes used as static allocations to offset conventional monetary asset volatility.
3. Personal market investments resembling non-public fairness, non-public credit score, and direct actual property holdings, which provide long-term return potential in change for liquidity threat and restricted pricing transparency.

Does the 40/30/30 portfolio work?

It’s exhausting to attract agency conclusions as a result of two elements restrict the usefulness of most knowledge used to help the 40/30/30 thesis. 

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The primary is survivorship bias. It’s straightforward to look backward and establish methods that delivered low correlation and strong returns, however that’s hindsight. Buyers didn’t essentially have entry to those funds or conviction in them when it mattered most. The hazard is cherry-picking success tales that weren’t extensively identified or obtainable on the time.

Second, outcomes are extremely time-period dependent. The efficiency of any diversified technique can differ meaningfully relying on the beginning and finish dates. A number of good or unhealthy years in alternate options can drastically skew the general return and threat profile of a portfolio.

That stated, there’s a comparatively strong benchmark with over twenty years of information that helps assess the viability of the idea: the MLM Index. This benchmark tracks a scientific trend-following technique throughout 11 commodities, six currencies, and 5 international bond futures markets. It weights every class primarily based on historic volatility and equal-weights particular person contracts inside every basket. Whereas not an ideal proxy for all alternate options, it affords uncommon long-term, clear, and rule-based knowledge in an area typically missing each.

Utilizing knowledge from Nov. 12, 2001, via Aug. 19, 2025, a 40/30/30 portfolio constructed with the S&P 500, Bloomberg U.S. Combination Bond Index, and KFA MLM Index (rebalanced quarterly) underperformed a standard 60/40 combine on whole returns, with a 6.89% compound annual progress fee (CAGR) versus 7.46%. Nevertheless, it considerably outperformed on a risk-adjusted foundation, with a Sharpe ratio of 0.71 versus 0.56.

Extra importantly, the diversification profit confirmed up when it mattered. The 40/30/30 portfolio demonstrated higher draw back safety throughout key stress occasions just like the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the 2008 monetary disaster, the COVID-19 crash in 2020 and the bear market of 2022.

Buyers can entry the KFA MLM Index via a U.S.-listed ETF: the KraneShares Mount Lucas Managed Futures Index Technique ETF (KMLM). It instantly tracks the benchmark and supplies publicity to trend-following futures methods throughout commodities, currencies and glued earnings. 

The catch? Since KMLM is U.S.-listed, Canadians face a couple of hurdles: foreign money conversion, a excessive 0.90% administration expense ratio, and a 15% international withholding tax on distributions except it’s held in a registered retirement financial savings plan (RRSP).