Optra Portfolio Review and Recent Performance

In this episode we answer emails from Jimmy, Anonymous and Matthew.  We discuss financing a home with portfolio leverage via ETFs or margin, revel in the generosity of our listeners and real-life encounters, and review a risk parity style portfolio and plan.  And touch on our recent vacation to South Africa.

And THEN we our go through our weekly portfolio reviews of the eight sample portfolios you can find at Portfolios | Risk Parity Radio.

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Breathless Unedited AI-Bot Summary:  

A near-miss with lions on safari sets the stage for a different kind of risk: how to fund a new home when most of your wealth sits in a taxable portfolio. We dive straight into the trade-offs between selling positions, taking a margin loan at a low-cost broker, or using a return-stacked ETF like RSST to maintain exposure while freeing up cash. The core question isn’t just, “Can I do this?” but “Can I live with it through a full market cycle?” We break down taxes, financing costs, and the behavior premium that separates clever from fragile.

From there, we build a clean, high-conviction risk parity allocation anchored in three pillars—stocks, Treasuries, and gold—and show why that can be enough to lift a safe withdrawal rate if you respect correlation math and rebalance discipline. Within equities, we pair large-cap growth with small value and international value to spread factor and regional risk. In the bond sleeve, we weigh a simple one-fund approach against a two-fund split (VGIT + VGLT) for small fee and flexibility gains. We also get practical on withdrawals: monthly trims from winners can quietly rebalance your portfolio while matching real-life bills, while quarterly or annual withdrawals suit planners who prefer fewer moves and more cash on hand.

Finally, we pull up the dashboard. Gold’s massive run challenges narratives that cherry-pick 1980 as a starting point; bonds have life; small value lags; and our sample portfolios highlight why diversification and costs matter more than headlines. The classics keep compounding, while the leveraged set underscores that concentration plus leverage is a rough mix, and thoughtful “return stacking” needs clear rules and flexible spending. If you’re weighing a home purchase, chasing a higher safe withdrawal rate, or simply trying to keep your strategy steady, you’ll find concrete steps you can use today.

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