Permanent Portfolio (Harry Browne) vs All Weather Portfolio (Ray Dalio)

Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio splits money equally into four 25% blocks: stocks, long-term bonds, gold, and cash — one for prosperity, one for deflation, one for inflation, and one for recession. Ray Dalio's All Weather pursues the same all-conditions idea but weights assets by risk, tilting heavily toward bonds and adding a commodities sleeve.

The Permanent Portfolio is prized for its elegant simplicity; All Weather is a more engineered attempt at balancing risk contributions.

The Permanent Portfolio's 25% cash block makes it the more conservative of the two, producing very shallow drawdowns but also capping growth. All Weather's larger bond and commodity positions have historically delivered somewhat higher returns with still-modest volatility.

Both lean on gold and long bonds, so both can suffer when rising real rates hit those assets simultaneously — as happened in 2022.

Pick the Permanent Portfolio if you value maximum simplicity and a large stable cash cushion. Pick All Weather if you want a bit more growth potential and are comfortable managing five sleeves instead of four. The metrics below quantify the difference.