About Asset Allocation Lab

Asset Allocation Lab is an independent, educational resource for learning about classic asset allocation strategies — well-known portfolio structures like the 60/40 Portfolio, the Permanent Portfolio, and Ray Dalio's All Weather Portfolio — and backtesting how they would have performed historically.

The site tracks 17 strategies built from 23 ETFs across 17asset classes, backtested over up to 30 years of historical data. Where an ETF didn't exist for the full period, we fill in the earlier years with a representative index proxy, clearly marked with a dashed line on every chart.

Methodology

Price data is sourced from Yahoo Finance and refreshed once daily at approximately 06:00 UTC by an automated pipeline that commits the updated figures to this site's repository and triggers a rebuild. Strategy and ETF metadata (allocations, expense ratios, index tracked) is maintained directly in this site's codebase and reviewed periodically against primary sources such as Portfolio Charts and fund issuer fact sheets.

Metrics shown throughout the site — CAGR, Max Drawdown, Volatility, Sharpe Ratio, Sortino Ratio — are computed from monthly total returns. Sharpe and Sortino ratios use an assumed 2% annual risk-free rate. The Nominal/Real toggle in the simulator uses an assumed 2.8% annual inflation rate, since no live CPI series is integrated.

Limitations

Backtests are hypothetical and use monthly resolution, so they smooth over intra-month volatility and exact daily drawdowns. Proxy-index segments approximate an asset class before its ETF existed and will not match the fund exactly. Results exclude taxes and trading commissions, and the assumed risk-free and inflation rates are fixed rather than drawn from live series. Past performance does not predict future results — treat every figure here as an educational illustration, not a forecast.

Editorial process

Blog posts and guides are written and reviewed by the site operator. We may use AI-assisted tools to help with research, drafting, or editing, but published content reflects our editorial judgment — not fully automated output. See our disclaimer for how to interpret everything on this site.

Who runs this site

Asset Allocation Lab is an independent project, not affiliated with any brokerage, fund issuer, or financial advisory firm. See our disclaimer for important context on how to use (and not use) the information here.