American Association of Individual Investors

American Association of Individual Investors

A Magic Allocation Recipe: Mixing Factor Investing Into a 60/40 Portfolio

Combining a classic stock/bond split with an enhanced equity allocation can add up to more than the sum of the parts.

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AAII
Oct 06, 2025
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Paul Merriman leads a class in AAII’s new Essential Investing Video Course. Go to https://www.aaii.com/ves for more information and to subscribe.

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  • Importance of staying the course through up and down markets

  • Benefits and limitations of a 60/40 stock/bond portfolio

  • How a four-fund strategy that diversifies the stock portion across asset classes is a smarter mix for resilience and wealth preservation

You undoubtedly know the benefits of holding 60% of a portfolio in equities and the other 40% in bond funds:

  • High on simplicity;

  • Low on stress; and

  • Easy to live with—and thus easy to stick with.

Plus, this allocation can achieve over 80% of the return of the S&P 500 index alone.

In this article, I show you, with numbers, how a combination of this classic 60/40 split with an enhanced equity allocation can add up to more—in some cases, much more—than the sum of the parts.

The goal is a relatively simple portfolio that’s good enough for a lifetime, providing peace of mind along with a generous piece of the action.

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