You could try their portfolio generator – it'll be based on Efficient Frontiers and presumably as smart as anything you'll get from an IFA (at least).

I'd use it as an excuse to try the tools at Portfolio Visualizer, and I use BlackRock's Capital Market Assumptions, on the whole, to fill in future expected returns data:

https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com

Mostly I'll use Backtest Asset Allocation (Table View) and Efficient Frontiers (Historic and Forecasted) and Portfolio Optimisation .. I think Yale used Monte Carlo simulations a bit .. The tools don't do it for you – you have to work out whether they're giving you the kind of answers you want, and how to nudge them in the right direction.

My portfolio is basically:
50% market exposure
50% recession and inflation protection

The protection's going to be mostly TIPS and gold (as Bridgewater say), then you can put REITs in there (held up well in the 70s), or Consumer Staples (tend to hold up well in recessions) – or both.

I'd say it's pretty efficient for a moderately aggressive portfolio .. I also think it's fun to mess around with and micromanage a bit .. My pondering switching REITs for Staples makes barely any difference on a backtest, or to efficiency .. It's much more about overall balance and risk exposure

You can have a deflationary or inflationary recession .. Inflationary (stagflation) is probably the greater risk to portfolios and wealth.

So in the really crude way I'd put it, if we had a deflationary recession, central banks could start buying assets again without risking overheating the economy .. And then your longer duration TIPS would probably be getting a good short-term bump up .. And gold appears to hedge deflation quite well too.

The problem with an inflationary recession is you can't use looser monetary policy to fight it without risking an inflationary spiral – so in the 1970s (when we had stagflation) gold was one of the few bright spots .. One assumption is that global debt's so high, whatever way things go, it's unlikely we'll want significantly positive real yields for long, and that sort of puts a cap on how much TIPS are likely to lose vs how much they hedge inflation.

I think the dilemma is that, if we get a few years of 5-7% inflation, that cash is really losing value.

TIPS can be volatile, but they're probably one of the only assets where you can know the real return you're going to get if held to duration – so even on today's negative real yields, there's a protection cash isn't giving you, despite volatility (part of the problem is we just don't notice the volatility in cash, because it's what we're measuring everything in) .. I wonder if we shouldn't all be holding 5-10% in commodities?

I keep reading comments about Gold being a good hedge against inflation like most people seem to think that it was in the 70’s but I am not convinced.

The collapse of the ‘Bretton Woods’ system in 1971-73, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, massive military spending by the US, etc had more of an influence on the gold price in the 70’s than inflation itself.
It is far too simplistic to compare the movement in the price of gold during the last period of high inflation and conclude that it will be a good inflation hedge this time around.

The price of Gold was already extremely high before we entered this inflationary period whereas it was stable at around $36 for many years leading into the 70’s.

It is more likely that the Gold price will rise in the event of a war in the Ukraine or conflict in the South China Sea!
We already have inflation at high levels and it doesn’t seem to have had much of an impact on the price of gold.

I did wonder about the same thing on your last point but I really do see commodities as more of cyclical play.

This is the way I see it:
high demand/short supply = booming prices = booming profits = higher inflation = squeezed household budgets = recession = lower demand/high supply = lower prices…. repeat.

I would like to think that if the managers of the funds you mentioned (and I hold) were going to have exposure to commodities, that they would have been there much earlier in the cycle.

Edited ..

A bit of a broadside at Troy/PNL from Ruffer LLP?

"...many think there is safety in the mega-tech stocks such as Apple and Microsoft. But we’re not so sure."

https://www.ruffer.co.uk...paign=2022-02-green-line