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Investing Strategies

A philosophy is what an investor believes. A strategy is what they actually do with the money on Monday morning. Each page below takes one strategy and sets out the mechanics, who runs it, what it has cost people in specific years, and the conditions under which it stops working.

Buy and HoldOwning an investment through complete market cycles and letting time, rather than trading, decide the outcome.Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Jack Bogle 8 investors 3 historical examples
The 60/40 PortfolioHolding roughly sixty percent in stocks and forty percent in bonds, rebalanced back to that split, as a single fixed policy.Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, William Bernstein 6 investors 3 historical examples
Core and SatelliteHolding most of the portfolio in a low-cost index core and expressing any active views in small, deliberately limited satellites.Jack Bogle, William Bernstein, David Swensen 5 investors 3 historical examples
Target-Date InvestingHolding one diversified fund that shifts automatically from stocks toward bonds as a chosen retirement year approaches.Jack Bogle, William Bernstein, Jeremy Siegel 5 investors 3 historical examples
Risk ParitySizing holdings so each asset contributes a similar share of portfolio risk rather than a similar share of the money.Ray Dalio, Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe 5 investors 3 historical examples
The Permanent PortfolioSplitting a portfolio equally between stocks, long-term bonds, gold and cash, and rebalancing back to those weights.Ray Dalio, William Bernstein, Harry Markowitz 4 investors 3 historical examples
Factor InvestingSelecting stocks by measurable shared characteristics such as value, size or momentum rather than by judging each company.Eugene Fama, Kenneth French, Cliff Asness 6 investors 3 historical examples
Concentrated InvestingDeliberately holding a small number of positions sized by conviction, accepting wider swings for the chance of a different result.Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, Seth Klarman 7 investors 3 historical examples

Covered elsewhere on the site

These strategies already have a page of their own, so they are linked rather than rewritten. One subject with two explanations is worse than one, and the pages below came first.

The beliefs behind them

Every strategy rests on an argument about where returns come from. These are the schools of thought each one is built on, and the same strategy often serves more than one.

Browse all investing philosophies

How to use these pages

These are explanations rather than recommendations. Every page states the conditions under which the strategy has performed badly, names the years in which that happened, and says who the approach fits poorly. None of them is presented as the right answer, because the honest position is that the right answer depends on circumstances this site knows nothing about.

A strategy and a philosophy are different objects, and mixing them up is the most common way people end up with a portfolio that contradicts itself. The philosophy decides what you are trying to own and why. The strategy decides how much, how often and when you stop. Two investors with the same philosophy can run completely different strategies, and both can be consistent.

Keep exploring

A strategy is one part of the picture. These directories cover the rest.

Investor profilesWho they were, how they decided, and what they got wrong.Investing philosophiesThe schools of thought, where each came from and where each struggles.Compare investors and assetsTwo approaches side by side, neutrally and with no winner.Quote librarySourced lines, each carrying its own attribution status.Investing conceptsPlain-English definitions of the terms these pages use.Guides libraryThe full encyclopedia, organised by subject.

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Educational content only. These pages explain how different investing strategies work. They are not recommendations, not investment advice, and not a judgment about which strategy suits your circumstances.