The Swensen Portfolio

David Swensen, "Unconventional Success" (2005). The Yale CIO's allocation for individuals.

published 2026-08-16 · rule 7f58326053d5e76ec69d116f9dfe8074

Not yet readable

Published 12 days ago — too new to read. Come back at about six months.

Its backtested claim is frozen and stored, and will be shown here against the live result once there is enough of a record to compare — not before. Quoting a backtest on its own is the thing this board exists to argue against.

The whole curve, split at the freeze

2001-06-29backtested claim·published 2026-08-16·record too short to draw yet2026-08-14

Log scale. The quiet half is the backtested claim exactly as frozen at publication — a hypothesis. The lit half is the same rule simulated forward from that day — the evidence. The split is the only place a fund can stop being a story.

The rule, exactly as frozen

EEM	5.0%
TIP	15.0%
TLT	15.0%
VEA	15.0%
VNQ	20.0%
VTI	30.0%

Rebalanced annual · measured against SPY. Members join the fund only once they exist and are investable, so the rule can run for decades before its youngest holding was ever listed.

How this page works

A Foundry fund is a rule, not a portfolio. When it is published the rule is frozen and fingerprinted, and its track record starts that day. The rule can never be edited afterwards — changing your mind forks a new fund with its own record from zero.

The backtested figures above are the claim exactly as it read on publication day, stored and never recomputed. Vendors restate adjusted closes as dividends and splits land, so re-running an old window today would quietly move the goalposts. Only the live half is computed fresh.

A fund needs roughly six months live before its numbers say anything, and a couple of years before they say much. Anything younger is listed as unreadable rather than good or bad. Published funds can be retired but never deleted.

Educational analysis only — not investment advice, and not a recommendation to buy or hold anything. A backtest is a hypothesis, not a forecast. Past performance, backtested or live, does not predict future results.

See every published fund ranked by how much of its claim survived.