Finding Your Portfolio Balance
Building an investment portfolio isn’t always straightforward. It’s personal. It’s about reflecting your goals, beliefs, and values, while also making sense of a vast marketplace of funds, themes, and ideas. The real challenge is often not choosing what’s available, but stitching those pieces together into something that feels balanced, resilient, and right for you.
That’s where the Portfolio Tracker comes in.
Rather than giving prescriptive answers or a 'one-size-fits-all' solution, the Tracker offers a framework, a way to see how different mixes of assets in real funds behave, and how they can anchor broader conversations about markets, narratives, and economic shifts.
You’ll see it referenced throughout Infundly Talks and Infundly Perspectives, where it serves as a common touchpoint:
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To frame ideas and opinions.
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To bring context to news, events, and themes.
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To spark discussion and comparison.
These portfolios are not tied to life stages or specific prescriptions, albeit they have been used in the table for familiarity. Instead, they’re tools: reference points to challenge, complement, and enrich your own approach.
Think of them as companions in your journey, providing perspective, highlighting trade-offs, and helping you build confidence in the mix you choose.
Portfolio | Aim | Asset Allocation | Investor Persona | 1m | 3m | 6m | 1yr | 3yrs | 5yrs | 10yrs | Volatility |
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Portfolio 1 | Go-Go Growth | 100% Equity | Legacy Builder | -0.10% | 7.30% | 16.30% | 12.30% | 56.20% | 84.20% | 251.10% | 10.52% |
Portfolio 2 | Growth with a backstop | 80% Equity / 20% Bonds | Wealth Navigator | -0.30% | 5.90% | 13.60% | 12.70% | 41.70% | 52.30% | 147.40% | 8.02% |
Portfolio 3 | Growth & Income | 60% Equity / 40% Bonds | Late-career professional | -0.30% | 4.90% | 11.00% | 10.40% | 32.30% | 33.10% | 102.50% | 6.97% |
Portfolio 4 | Balance | 50% Equity / 50% Bonds | Pre-retiree | 0.00% | 6.40% | 9.80% | 8.90% | 14.80% | 0.10% | 47.20% | 8.99% |
Portfolio 5 | Income Engine | 40% Equity / 60% Bonds | Retiree | -0.20% | 4.10% | 8.60% | 7.90% | 23.10% | 15.90% | 64.40% | 6.16% |
Portfolio 6 | Capital Preservation | 20% Equity / 80% Bonds | Capital preserver | -0.20% | 3.20% | 6.30% | 5.90% | 15.90% | 2.40% | 35.60% | 5.67% |
Portfolio 7 | All-Terrain | 40% Equity / 30% Bonds / 30% Alternatives | Income seeker with inflation worries | -0.20% | 4.10% | 10.50% | 12.50% | 22.30% | 31.90% | 86.30% | 6.15% |
Portfolio 8 | Explorer’s Pack | 60% Equity / 20% Bonds / 20% Alternativess | Global diversifier | 0.20% | 5.30% | 10.40% | 10.10% | 24.10% | 20.70% | 46.40% | 5.52% |
Updated on the 1st December 2025
PUTTING PORTFOLIOS INTO CONTEXT
GOALS, BELIEFS, AND THE BIGGER PICTURE
Everyone invests for different reasons. Your goals, beliefs, and values are unique — and those personal considerations deserve more space in the way we think about portfolios. That’s why you’ll see them reflected throughout Infundly Perspectives and Infundly Talks.
The Portfolio Tracker helps by showing how different mixes of assets have performed in the real world. But numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.
BEYOND 'LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH' RISK
Risk is often simplified into three categories — low, medium, and high. It’s an easy shortcut, but it misses a lot of nuance.
Take our fictional private investor Sophie, for example:
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Sophie doesn’t like the idea of losing money. A 'low-risk' portfolio, mostly government bonds, might seem the obvious fit.
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But there’s another kind of risk: losing purchasing power as inflation chips away at returns. A portfolio that feels 'safe' today might not protect her future spending power.
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Or imagine someone investing only in one country or one industry — they could still face concentration risk, even if the portfolio is labelled 'medium.'
Risk, then, isn’t just about volatility. It’s about trade-offs, and about matching a portfolio to what matters most to you.
WHY USE REAL FUNDS?
The Tracker doesn’t highlight specific products, the funds included are purely illustrative. But by using real-world data, it can:
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Show how different asset classes respond to news, economic events, and market cycles.
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Provide dynamic insights into how allocation choices affect returns.
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Make the discussion more relatable than if we used only hypothetical models.
TIME HORIZONS MATTER
Markets are noisy in the short run. That’s why the Tracker looks at multiple return periods:
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Short-term: behaviour magnified by volatility.
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Medium-term: how events smooth out over cycles.
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Long-term: how strategy and discipline tend to dominate.
As the investor Benjamin Graham put it:
'In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.'
Volatility — the measure of how much returns fluctuate — is included to highlight how different portfolio mixes move relative to each other, and to prompt reflection on why those moves occur.
A LIVING SNAPSHOT
The table updates monthly, capturing returns at a point in time. It’s intended as a reference, not a prescription. While every effort is made to keep it accurate, errors or omissions may occur.
Think of the Portfolio Tracker as a compass, not a map. It won’t tell you exactly where to go, but it will help you make sense of where you are, navigate with more confidence, test ideas, and spark questions.