Perhaps you’ve heard this saying: “There are old pilots; and there are bold pilots; but there are no old, bold pilots.”

The same applies to investing because at the end of the day – for both pilots and investors – it’s about their respect and tolerance for risk.

Said another way, the key to longevity is survival.

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of economic bubbles – which is also what fuels their very existence – is our blindness to them.

Historically, few have correctly called a bubble in advance. And yet, in modern times, people have been asking if we’re in the bubble since 2010. What gives?

We began writing about the pitfalls of a traditional 60/40 portfolio back before it was trendy. We felt so strongly about the topic that we published a white paper in August of 2018. Some considered us renegades back then for having the audacity to question what had been the bread and butter strategy that helped millions of investors retire comfortably.

But the question is: Will the 60/40 allow the next generation of investors to also retire well?

A colleague recently shared with me a story about a January tradition of the Kiwanis Club of Cape Fear in Fayetteville, NC, which holds a contest to see who can best predict where the Dow Jones Industrial Average will end the year.

She described how some members have a thoughtful internal debate while others jot down numbers seemingly at random. By the following year, pretty much no one remembers the guess they submitted, and rarely is the winner someone within financial services. A chiropractor won in 2020, a national defense analyst the year before.

What made the contest sound so fun to me is that the guesses and winners seem so haphazard and unexpected. Why? Because most predictions are garbage.

At Blueprint, we like to think that our trend-following proclivities have many applications. Some (like our ability to systematically manage assets for our advisor clients) are certainly more useful than others (like the fresh 2020 pop culture reference that will come when you read on).