Ideas
Permanent Portfolio is all-weather and inflation-robust.
Cullen highlights Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio as very robust to inflation and an all-weather design built from four quadrants: cash for recession protection, T-bonds for deflation, stocks for growth, and gold as a high inflation hedge. He says it is simple, incredibly thoughtful, diverse, and has held up unbelievably well over the last 60 years.
Long-term government bonds are poor risk-adjusted.
Cullen views long-term government bonds, including T-bonds and long-term TIPS ladders, as terrible long-duration instruments. For investors with a time horizon of seven years or more, he believes almost anything else, such as a 60/40 portfolio or stocks, will generate better risk-adjusted returns. He also dislikes the bond market structure because the US government issues duration without regard to investor needs.
60/40 beats T-bonds over seven years.
For investors with a time horizon of seven years or more, Cullen recommends a 60/40 stock/bond portfolio if they want something modestly boring, arguing it will generate better risk-adjusted returns than a long-term Treasury bond. He notes that a 60/40 portfolio behaves like a 10-12 year instrument on average.
Stocks win for long horizons.
For investors with time horizons longer than seven years, Cullen explicitly says to buy stocks or almost anything else rather than long-term government bonds, because the stock market is a long-term instrument tied to firms that generate revenue and income over many years.
Aggregate bond funds lack market discipline.
Cullen is confused why anyone would buy an aggregate bond fund because the index simply takes whatever the US government and other issuers force into it. Unlike a market-cap weighted stock index where competition and evolution improve the index over time, the bond aggregate lacks market discipline and increasingly carries long duration risk from government issuance.
T-bills beat CDs and savings accounts.
Cullen is a huge advocate of the T-bill and chill portfolio and believes T-bills and short-term government notes are extremely useful. He argues CDs and high-yield savings accounts are suboptimal compared to a simply managed T-bill portfolio, and praises the Box ETF as a brilliant synthetic T-bill portfolio. He also says a 0-5 year government bond ladder can produce a beautifully systematic and certain outcome without long-term duration risk.
Forward Cap bets on five mega trends.
Cullen created the Forward Cap Portfolio to skate to where the puck is going by extrapolating five mega trends—technology, consumption, emerging markets, healthcare, and decentralization—out to 2050 and buying the future market-cap weights. He notes it is very aggressive, highly diverse, global, and backtested to beat the US stock market, though it is riskier and a risk-adjusted tossup.
Technology stocks have low expected returns.
In Cullen's defined duration model, technology stocks have low future expected returns, which gives them a very long defined duration of over 30 years. This means they carry high sequence-of-returns risk and should only be judged over very long horizons, making them less attractive for near- or intermediate-term goals.
Foreign value has lower sequence risk.
Cullen says a foreign value index has a much lower expected max drawdown relative to expected returns, giving it a defined duration closer to 15 years and lower sequence risk than technology stocks. This makes it a better candidate for intermediate time horizons.
Defined duration ETFs match time horizons.
Cullen's Discipline Funds offers three defined duration ETFs—DDV, DDX, and DDXX—designed as time-weighted strategies to match 5-, 10-, and 20-year horizons. The methodology removes long-duration bonds and barbells short-duration bills/notes with high-quality, shorter-duration equities to provide stable real returns and better time-horizon matching than traditional bond aggregates or TIPS ladders.
This Meb Faber Show video, published January 02, 2026,
features Cullen Roche
discussing Permanent Portfolio, Long-term TIPS ladder, TLT, 30-year Treasury bonds, 60/40 stock/bond portfolio, STOCKS, AGG, BIL, 0-5 year Treasury bond ladder, BOXX, Forward Cap Portfolio, XLK, EFV, DDV, DDX, DDXX.
10 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers:
Cullen Roche
· Tickers:
Permanent Portfolio,
Long-term TIPS ladder,
TLT,
30-year Treasury bonds,
60/40 stock/bond portfolio,
STOCKS,
AGG,
BIL,
0-5 year Treasury bond ladder,
BOXX,
Forward Cap Portfolio,
XLK,
EFV,
DDV,
DDX,
DDXX
