IndexUniverse posted a lengthy article by John Serrapere recapping the latest quarter for his 75/50 portfolio. The 75/50 means that the portfolio tries to capture 75% of the market's upside with only 50% of the downside over the course of a stock market cycle.

The portfolio and articles about the portfolio are long running at IndexUniverse and can be a very constructive read. He quantifies (75 and 50) specific targets in contrast to my simply looking to go down less (this will mean different things at different times) during bear phases and go along for the ride to the upside. The way this has played out for me has been down less, I have had a couple of years being very close to the market during up years and one year that the SPX was up very little and I was up a lot. Generally I expect to lag a little when the market is up a lot and hope to do well the rest of the time including hoping to go down less when the market goes down a lot.

Despite those difference I believe there is some conceptual overlap between what I do and write about and what Serrapere does. Another big difference however is in portfolio construction. Page 8 of the article discloses Serrapere's portfolio and it is interesting, revealing and constructive for learning about blending things together.

Below the portfolio (a screen shot from the article would be difficult to see);

• AMJ 3.5%
• ARBFX 3.7%
• DBA 4.9%
• EWZ 3.2%
• GAF 3.2%
• GDX 12.9%
• GIM 12.8%
• GLD 12.8%
• JRS 3.9% (short position)
• MERFX 3.7%
• MOO 3.0%
• PXJ 3.3%
• TBT 24.7% (thought of as a short/hedge position)
• TDF 3.1%
• TIP 7.1%
• VXX 7.4% (thought of as a short/hedge position)
• VXZ 7.5% (thought of as a short/hedge position)
• XLE 3.9%

In the article Serrapere mentioned this mix being up not quite 11% on the year versus about 17% for the SPX at the quarter end. For the the first three quarters he came up a little short of the 75% but hats off to him for getting so close with this mix (obviously there have been changes along the way that I did not catalog). What I mean is that when he hedges he goes heavy, much heavier into buying products than I do.