The markets continue to go the way of both my risk-managed focus as well as what the ROAR Scores across ETFs and stocks have been telling us for nearly 6 months. That risk of major loss is about as high as I’ve ever seen it. But then again, I’m only 40 years into this.

In our efforts to create an easy-to-use and efficient method for subscribers at different levels to access timely updates on this portfolio, and the other premium portfolios we will add soon, here’s a summary:

• Every Tuesday in the Weekly ROAR, I’ll update the ROAR 10 ETF model portfolio positions as of that day. All paid subscription levels will receive this.

• Every Tuesday in our live session, Substack premium members ($600 a year) are invited to join me for a weekly review of markets, and DIY research and portfolio coaching in a group setting. I am now focusing these sessions around how to get the most out of the ROAR.PiTrade.com research site, which remains free to use for now.

• Every Wednesday (time of day may vary based on market conditions), I make any weekly model adjustments/trades my live ROAR 10 ETF model account at PiTrade.com.

• Note: Since this is the day after the Weekly ROAR newsletter comes out, those positions may be different than what is reported in the Tuesday newsletter. This is an active portfolio, and markets are, well, quite active at times.

• Anyone who is copy trading that account there will have their account traded at the same time as mine, as was discussed in this week’s live session. They will also see the top 5 positions (out of 10). We are working on trying to provide full model visibility through that site or the ROAR.PiTrade.com research site.

• Remember that this is a model portfolio and I am NOT a fiduciary. PiTrade.com is an RIA (internet/robo investment advisor), and accounts there are custodied with Interactive Brokers. My role is as a model creator, and I license that model to PiTrade for use by their advisory clients.

• Investors can see ROAR Scores on the 10 ETFs in this portfolio, or any stock or ETF traded on US exchanges, 24/7 at ROAR.PiTrade.com.

Now, here are those updated ROAR 10 ETF model portfolio positions and ROAR Scores as of today’s market close (3/26/26).

Read more

Yesterday we offered a special edition live session . We normally do this once a quarter for all of our paid subscribers ($15/month or $150/year).

If you think you can benefit from hearing from me live (or recording sent next day) weekly, Premium ETFYourself.com is $600 a year. $450 additional for about 50 hours a year of timely market and portfolio discussion.

Subscribe now

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This week’s live session will cover global markets in a way you’ve never seen before. Rob Isbitts will use the new ROAR.PiTrade.com analytics tool based on his decades of technical analysis work to survey global markets in search of return with tight risk management.

This session will cover:

1. ETF and stock analysis

2. Creating watchlists to track your research

3. Using the “House Blend” simple portfolios Rob created for the site

4. How to build your own portfolio using this system

5. Understanding backtesting, performance analytics and what matters in modern markets

This session is typically open ONLY to premium subscribers of ETFYourself.com or our IG at Seeking Alpha. However, if you sign up for a month of ETFYourself.com for $15 a month, you can attend this live session.

A video recording of the session will be sent to all paid subscribers the following day.

Markets are manic. Your investing approach doesn’t have to be. Learn to master risk management with us, to create better long-term returns.

Join us tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24 at 4 PM EST. Registration is required below:

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As promised, here is the recording from yesterday’s quarterly live session for those who missed it or would like to review.

One Tuesday each quarter, we open that live session to those who subscribe to the basic tier ($15/month or $150 a year) at ETFYourself.com. We also send a video recording of the meeting out on Wednesday to all paid subscribers.

Here’s what we covered in this live session:

1. My latest market thoughts, highlighting how I’m using our new ROAR.PiTrade.com research system (that is free for you to use too)

2. 7 questions all investors should be asking themselves right now, when it concerns investment strategy

3. Why 80% of investors might be better off focusing on just 2 ETFs as a “core” portfolio to work around. I’ll present my evidence live.

4. A live discussion of the major position paper we published this morning: The 10-ETF portfolio.

5. What’s next for subscribers to ETFYourself.com. Hint: it includes the phrase “mastermind.”

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I like to say there are 2 types of investors.

1. Those who proactively manage risk because they’ve learned from experience that it is THE key to long-term success

2. Those who have not yet learned it, probably because they were not focused on investing (or could even talk) back in 2009, the last time true risk-management mattered.

Risk management is not about saving a few dollars the next time the S&P 500 hiccups. It is about having been well out the door when it eventually barfs all over the room (sorry for the graphics there)

Every Tuesday at 4 PM EST, I gather with a group of focused, dedicated serious investors that I consider the “inner circle” of my work at Sungarden Investment Publishing and ETFYourself.com. We meet for about an hour, and I provide my latest thinking. We cover markets and strategy, ETFs and stocks. And I encourage and respond to all of their questions, live.

One Tuesday each quarter, we open that live session to those who subscribe to the basic tier ($15/month or $150 a year) at ETFYourself.com. Tomorrow is that latest quarterly open session. By “open” we mean any paid subscriber at any level. And given what I see in markets currently, I cannot think of a better time to sit in with us.

If you sign up for $15 for a month, that gets you in. And if you are already a subscriber, we hope to see you there. We’ll also send a video recording of the meeting out on Wednesday to all paid subscribers, as we do each week.

Here’s what I’ll cover in this live session, before taking your questions:

1. My latest market thoughts, highlighting how I’m using our new ROAR.PiTrade.com research system (that is free for you to use too)

2. 7 questions all investors should be asking themselves right now, when it concerns investment strategy

3. Why 80% of investors might be better off focusing on just 2 ETFs as a “core” portfolio to work around. I’ll present my evidence live.

4. A live discussion of the major position paper we published this morning: The 10-ETF portfolio.

5. What’s next for subscribers to ETFYourself.com. Hint: it includes the phrase “mastermind.”

I hope you’ll join us! Please register below if you have not done so already.

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Investing today isn’t about following the old “buy and hold” rules your parents used; it’s about having a repeatable process to navigate a fast, unpredictable world. This guide is a “starter kit” of fundamental concepts designed to help you protect your capital first, so you can grow it with confidence later. Instead of chasing hot stock tips, you will learn to build a disciplined strategy that prioritizes clarity and peace of mind over high-risk gambling.

Phase 1: The Modern Investor’s Mindset

1. Check Your Ego: Accept that the market is chaotic and doesn’t care about your personal opinions or needs.

2. The #1 Rule—Avoid the “Big Loss” (ABL): Protecting what you’ve already earned is more important than chasing a high score.

3. Find Your Anchor: Pick a guiding philosophy—like “capital preservation”—to keep you steady when the market gets stormy.

4. Process Over Luck: Stop “hoping” for things to work out; replace blind optimism with a repeatable plan.

5. Think in Shades of Grey: Investing isn’t “all in” or “all out.” Adjust your risk level gradually based on conditions.

6. Manage Your Emotions: Fear and greed cause most bad decisions; discipline is more important than picking the “right” stock.

7. Don’t Fall in Love: Treat every investment as a tool, not a teammate; never get emotionally attached.

8. Invest with Humility: Always prioritize humility over arrogance to avoid “fighting” the market trend.

9. Be a Serial Learner: Commit to constant improvement and the study of market history to understand what is possible.

10. Define “Big Loss” Early: Quantify your maximum loss in dollars and percentage before you enter a trade.

Phase 2: Debunking Wall Street Myths

11. “Buy-and-Hold” is Broken: News and moves happen instantly today. Slow-world strategies are now dangerous.

12. The 60/40 Split is a Gamble: Bonds no longer reliably cushion stock crashes; they can both fall at the same time.

13. Diversification vs. Overcrowding: Owning too many similar funds (de-worse-ification) creates a false sense of security.

14. The “10% Average” is a Myth: Markets can stay flat for decades. Success depends on how you handle those gaps.

15. Wall Street Sells Products, Not Processes: Most advisors sell “packages” rather than strategies that protect you.

16. TINA is a Trap: The “There Is No Alternative” to stocks argument often leads to overvalued market bubbles.

17. Indifferent Investors: Index funds buy and sell regardless of value, which causes markets to move in giant, irrational waves.

18. Modern Market Speed: High-frequency algorithms move markets in days what used to take years.

19. Bond “Safety” is Math-Based: Bonds have a due date, but their price can drop 20% or more if interest rates rise.

20. Hidden Leverage: Bubbles burst when excessive debt in the system is finally unveiled and forced to liquidate.

Phase 3: Market Mechanics and Analysis

21. Risk vs. Volatility: Daily ups and downs are normal; the permanent loss of your money is the only “real” risk.

22. The Math of Recovery: If you lose 50% of your money, you need a 100% gain just to get back to where you started.

23. Secular vs. Cyclical: Recognize long-term “regime changes” that dictate which styles work for a decade.

24. The Kitchin Cycle: Short-term economic waves usually lasting 3 to 5 years based on business inventory levels.

25. The Juglar Cycle: Medium-term waves (7–11 years) usually tied to major business investment patterns.

26. The Kuznets Cycle: Longer waves (15–25 years) often driven by infrastructure and real estate construction.

27. The Kondratiev Wave: Massive 45–60 year “super-cycles” that shift the entire social and economic mood.

28. Technical Analysis: Charts are “truth-tellers” that show you where human psychology is moving the money.

29. Price Rules Everything: Market trends and “price action” matter more than fundamental earnings estimates.

30. R-Squared Analysis: A statistic that tells you how much of a fund’s return is market-driven vs. manager skill.

Phase 4: The Tactical Toolkit

31. The ROAR Score: A quantifiable “weather report” that tells you when to be aggressive or defensive. (For more on ROAR, listen to THIS short clip)

32. Rolling Returns: Evaluate performance over overlapping 12-month periods to see true consistency.

33. YARP (Yield at a Reasonable Price): Comparing a stock’s current dividend payout to its own historical average value.

34. Total Return over Yield: A high dividend isn’t worth it if the stock price crashes. Focus on stable price plus yield.

35. The “T-Bill Plus” Strategy: Using short-term Treasuries to “insure” your principal while leaving room for growth.

36. Tail Risk Prevention: Always have a plan for the “Black Swan”—the rare crash that causes the most damage.

37. Investment Climate Indicator (ICI): Use metrics like unemployment and yield spreads to judge if the market is “Stormy.”

38. Option Collars: Using options like insurance to lock your portfolio into a specific, safe range of returns.

39. Inverse ETFs: Learning to use securities that go up when the market goes down to hedge your long positions.

40. Active Management: A dynamic approach that adjusts your exposure based on changing market realities in real-time.

Phase 5: Execution and Portfolio Construction

41. The Depth Chart: Build a roster of pre-researched stocks and ETFs ready to be swapped into your lineup.

42. Offense Bucket: Funds meant to score points and gain value when the market is healthy.

43. Defense Bucket: Cash, short-term bonds, or inverse funds meant to protect your lead during downturns.

44. Wildcard Bucket: Small, riskier positions that can provide a boost without sinking the ship if they fail.

45. Rent, Don’t Own: In a fast world, treat positions as temporary tactical moves rather than long-term marriages.

46. Position Sizing: Let your pre-defined risk limits—not your “gut feeling”—decide how much to invest in one trade.

47. Sell Discipline: Decide exactly when you will exit a trade before you ever click the buy button.

48. The Bond Ladder: Using bonds with staggered end dates to create a predictable stream of cash.

49. The “Live Day” Calendar: Schedule specific review times to avoid reacting emotionally to daily news.

50. Community Collective Wisdom: Seek feedback from like-minded investors to avoid the “lonely journey” of DIY investing.

Here, we walk you through the key steps to start thinking like a portfolio manager. Our long-time subscribers have helped us get this far in breaking down some powerful concepts and helping me to translate them from my portfolio manager’s brain to a format that a wider audience of serious investors can adapt as they see fit. We look forward to you being part of that continuous brainstorming process as you get comfortable with how this all works.

And if you are in the Premium version of our service that includes our weekly live session, we’ll interact live, and you can ask me questions as you learn the process I’ve used for decades, managing money professionally.

HOME

As with many other publications on the popular Substack platform, ETF Yourself’s home page is a starting point, containing some of our latest public posts, and some timeless content we think subscribers will want to keep front-of-mind.

Now, let’s take a look at what’s in each of the main tabs.

START

Learn Investing Basics…accurately. That last word is so important.

Our observation about today’s instant-gratification, popularity-driven, adversarial online culture? We’ve never had more information at our fingertips, and we’ve never used less of it! We try to approach it differently.

That means clarifying and correcting some common misinterpretations of traditional investment education. Some of what DIY investors learn is just fine. But too much of it is neutered by sound bites, oversimplification, and greed of the communicator. Not here. Ever.

This serves as our introduction, providing the foundational philosophy and tools needed to use the ROAR Score system effectively. It is designed to help DIY investors transition from speculative “price-chasing” to a professional, risk-managed process.

The page highlights several key pillars of the ETF Yourself approach:

1. The Core Philosophy

• How To ETF Yourself: This lead article outlines a time-tested process for building simpler, risk-managed portfolios. It emphasizes that the goal isn’t just to find “winners,” but to manage the “climate” of the market.

• Rob’s Rules of Risk Management: A collection of 30 key takeaways from Rob Isbitts’ 30+ years of professional investing experience, serving as the “moral compass” for the site’s strategies.

2. Proprietary Tools

• The ROAR Score: This section introduces the proprietary risk-management tool that assigns a “grade” to the market. It explains how to interpret these scores to adjust your exposure between growth assets and capital preservation.

• DIY GPS: A guide to navigating the “fog of hype” in the financial media by sticking to a disciplined, data-driven framework.

3. Practical Portfolio Building

The START page provides specific “blueprints” for different investor needs:

• The “Simple” 2-ETF Portfolio: Demonstrates how just two ETFs and an effective allocation system can cover significant ground for most investors.

• Bond Ladder Strategies: Includes deep dives on how to use ETFs as a “Treasuries Plus” bond ladder, combining long-term predictability with short-term opportunity.

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RESEARCH

This serves as the analytical hub for DIY investors, focusing on risk management and market climate assessment through three primary pillars:

1. The Weekly ROAR

Each week, the format is as follows:

• In the issue. A quick introduction. This is available to non-paying subscribers as well, absent the key details reserved for paid subscribers.

• Robservations, Rob’s blunt assessment of the current market climate, and potential drivers of portfolio results. This covers multiple time frames, from what’s happening right now, to a few months out, and even a few years out

• Charts I’m watching. A set of charts covering ETFs, indexes, economic indicators, and some stocks too. This is where Rob bottom-lines how his chart work informs his views on risk management and where he thinks money will be treated best.

• ROAR Score weekly update. A quick statement about the current level of our primary risk indicator, and how it maps to the allocation of our simple 2-ETF portfolios. Note that while ROAR is an overall risk indicator for investors to consider, its application here is specific to determining the allocation between stocks and cash, via an allocation to the ETF tickers SPY and BIL. So factors such as T-bill interest rates, analysis of the S&P 500 versus other indexes, and Rob’s general bent toward conservative investing have a heavy impact here.

• Allocation Model: weekly update. The 2-ETF portfolio concept is perhaps the fastest-growing aspect of ETF Yourself. Rob is constantly researching other combinations of ETFs that work well together as “offense/defense” pairs. But for those who like the idea of a more diverse set of ETFs in a portfolio, the Allocation Model will be a useful tool.

Each week, we display the current model, which is comprised of 10 different ETFs (5 offense, 5 defense). We gravitated toward a “permanent portfolio” concept here, in that the model allocates to all 10 ETFs, all the time. We show the current weight/allocation to each, and also compare it to our “neutral” weights. That’s our assumption of the long-term average weight we’d expect to assign to each one.

2. Daily Observations (The “Daily ROAR” Context)

While the Weekly reports provide the macro view, the research section includes frequent, daily updates and deep dives that track immediate market shifts. These include:

• S&P 500 Sector Watch: Real-time analysis of leadership (or lack thereof) within market sectors.

• Technical Spotlights: Specific “Charts of the Day,” such as the “Circus Tent” chart for silver or technical breakdowns of individual stocks like Blue Owl.

• Tactical Nuance: Observations on whether the S&P 500 is at risk of declining faster or finding support.

3. The Sunday Edition (Weekly Digest)

The Sunday Edition acts as a comprehensive “Weekly Investing Digest.” It summarizes all the writing, myth-busting, and educational content produced by Rob Isbitts over the previous seven days. It is designed to ensure subscribers stay caught up on:

• Market trends and ETF performance.

• Educational pieces for DIY investors.

• A consolidated view of the week’s research across multiple media formats.

MANAGE Risk

Managing risk is THE priority for us. Steep losses simply take too long to recover from. So why not do all we can to avoid them? Does that mean performance suffers? Not in our experience. It just means it is less exciting. To us, that’s not a bad thing.

ETFs are the central investment vehicle we use here. However, Rob’s diverse work in managing risk spans well beyond that. So this section of this site is our ongoing focus on how to manage risk, with ETFs and beyond.

At ETF Yourself, we rely heavily on our proprietary ROAR Score which can be applied to any ETF or Stock, using the system at Roar.PiTrade.com

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INVEST

The INVEST section focuses on the practical application of the research and risk-grading found elsewhere on the site. It acts as the “execution” layer for the ETF Yourself philosophy.

The section is defined by two primary paths for subscribers:

• Model Portfolio Implementation: The flagship strategy highlighted is the 10-ETF Allocation Portfolio. This is described as a powerful, differentiated way to grow capital using proactive risk management combined with the analytics of the ROAR Score.

• Execution Options: Subscribers can choose their level of involvement:

  • DIY: Create and manage your own portfolios based on the provided research.

  • Copy-Trading: For those who prefer a more automated approach, the section points to PiTrade.com (as noted in the section header) where users can directly copy-trade Rob’s models.

• Performance Transparency: This area includes the Investment Performance Update, which tracks both live and hypothetical returns for the model portfolios (last updated as of late 2025).

ABOUT

This last section aims to help you understand where we’ve been in the business of helping investors in many formats. That includes Rob’s 27 years as a fiduciary investment advisor, 3 stints as a mutual fund manager, and now, since 2020, as a researcher and publisher, delivering exclusively non-personalized investment content.

In my experience, there are major gaps between what professionals provide versus what DIY investors prioritize. We aim to help close that gap.

By doing so, we hope to allow self-directed types to borrow from my experience, embrace the analytics capability I have access to and the “intellectual property” I’ve developed over the decades.

So they can decide for themselves how to use it.

Rob Isbitts - Creator, ETFYourself.com and the ROAR Score investing factor.

Investing in the 2020s: It’s just different now.

I’ve been a professional investor long enough to remember when very few people cared to learn about investing. They more likely worked for big companies, and earned a pension, instead of handling a lot their savings themselves.

I started building portfolios in my prior life as an investment advisor and fund manager in the early 1990s. After several years designing systems for portfolio managers, I became one in 1993. Ironically, the same year the first ETF (SPY) debuted.

Fast-forward to now, and “everyone” is into “investing.” However, to my great disappointment as an investing industry lifer, who learned to chart stocks as a teenagers (with high tech tools like a pencil and graph paper!), there’s a lot of wasted time today. When it comes to helping self-directed investor learn to invest FOR THEMSELVES, much of my industry has not taken what I’d call the high road.

Stock picks, fast-talking Instagram personalities turned investing experts, and urgency about everything dominate our attention. I get it, “sex” sells and in the investing world, what’s sexier than investing a little to make a lot? Or, following a time-tested approach like dividend investing, or just buying and holding an S&P 500 index fund? I suppose people feel safer when they invest in something popular. Except for one thing:

Much of it is a false promise of success. It doesn’t last. Why? Lack of process, too much greed and speculation, and lack of recognition of how markets now operate.

We’ve had nearly 2 decades of “easy money” fiscal policies around the globe. That has created an environment where consolidation of effort is not only less stressful and less time-consuming, but likely produces better long-term results.

How do you get started? Here’s my take.

I’ll cover the steps to build a portfolio, right after I drive home some key pre-requisites. To see what I see, and follow my lead in building your own portfolio, it helps if you agree to do the following. Commit to them from the start.

• Make risk management THE priority. So much investment discussion is barely distinguishable from gambling. “What to buy now” and “don’t miss this big stock pick.” That’s no good without context. What I’m talking about here is the concept of risk management. That any security can go up at any time, but that the degree of risk attached to pursuing that return varies by security, and by time. Sounds basic, right? But so often, we let marketing noise get in the way.

• Learn to use ETFs as the flexible vehicle they are. These modern tools are often overused or underused. And ETF is a just a wrapper around a set of assets with a pre-determined purpose: to track a segment of the investment markets.

• Build portfolios based on the realities of the 2020s, not the 1990s. I’ve invested through both. The two eras have little in common. It has to to with the emergence of algorithmic trading, the explosion of interest in options and leverage, and indexing. ETFs have been part of that.

• Play offense and defense…at the same time. What does that mean? I’m always invested to participate in a rising markets. However, I’m also hedged. Always. Sometimes, the “defense” part of the portfolio can overcome the weakness of the offense side in rough markets. If you buy into that concept, you have a fighting chance to make money in ANY market. Something most investors can’t do.

• Be humble and curious throughout the process. We all have shorter attention spans than when we were kids. And unfortunately, we now live in a most arrogant and skeptical world. I ask that you approach building a portfolio like its a business. Your business. And in business, the first goal is to stay in business. And to treat the journey as critical to reaching the destination. You don’t need to become a market and ETF expert. You just need to avoid being overconfident. This picture should help.

Building an ETF portfolio. Simply and effectively.

That table above provides a snapshot view of 6 key decisions that should be made by a DIY investor before they start putting their hard-earned money into a portfolio they build themselves. Today’s world is so transactional but here, it should be strategic. Otherwise, we set ourselves up for a case of “I didn’t realize THAT could happen.”

1. Risk Management

This is across the whole portfolio. It does not matter what any single holding does, if you manage the portfolio as a unit. In the same way a star player can’t carry the whole team forever.

My personal limit to what I’m willing to lose in my main portfolio before serious consideration is 10% from top to bottom. When you consider that the S&P 500 drops 20% from time to time, and 50-60% in bear markets, that tells you I’m not willing to play that game. I do not believe that big losses are OK because “it always comes back.” Because historically, that’s just not true. Its the “recency effect” because of the times we live in.

In fact, I’ll have some serious discussions (with myself) if I am down 5% from peak to trough. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a looser downside limit. 10%, 15%, even 20% is typical across the investor spectrum. Frankly, if its more than 20%, that’s not consistent with what we coach here. Still, anyone can take our work and modify it to be more or less aggressive. That’s the idea. We provide the research and structure, so you can do you!

2. Evaluation Frequency (a.k.a. time commitment)

Everyone who wants to invest on their own has to find time to do it consistently. I have some trading portfolios that I look at closely every single market day. However, for the type of investing we’re discussing here, a weekly regimen seems just fine.

The key is maintaining “neutral” and high/low ranges around the size of each ETF position. That’s part of step 6 below.

That said, when markets get very volatile it can create some opportunity. Those may also be when major losses can be avoided through proactive moves. As such, I suggest that DIY investors develop their own, personalized set of rules around what prompts an unexpected portfolio review day.

That said, my ROAR Score approach takes a lot of the guesswork out of that. And at times of market calamity, I am more active than usual in communicating with subscribers. The MANAGE RISK tab helps you explore that.

3. How many ETFs to own?

Just a pair of them, one representing the stock market, the other T-bills (cash), is enough for some investors. In fact, as time goes on, I think more folks will embrace the simplicity of that paradigm.

But while rotating among 2, 3, or 4 ETFs has its advantages as to efficiency of time and effort, it leaves a lot of opportunity on the table. So here, I’ll focus on my go-to approach for larger ETF portfolios. How large? $100,000 and up, but could be as low as $50,000.

Recently, I challenged myself to reduce the more than 4,000 US-traded ETFs to the smallest number I thought could be managed in a portfolio, alongside each other. The number I ended up with? 10. The key is that by cutting out more than 99.7% of the entire ETF universe, did I still feel I could avail myself to the vast majority of opportunities across the broad markets. My answer? YES.

Keep in mind that while this works for me, the PROCESS is the key. So you can customize it for yourself. Part of our service is to discuss and debate YOUR ideas on things like this, using me as a resource, and sounding board.

See our INVEST tab for deeper dives on the rationale for portfolios containing anywhere from 2 to 10 ETFs. We talk stocks there, too.

4. Position Size

Even in a portfolio with a small number of ETFs, it helps to install some “guardrails” around the investment process. A key aspect of that is determining and assigning the maximum and minimum portions of the total investment (in % terms) I am willing to own at any point in time. And, what I’d consider a “neutral” or average weighting over time. This elevates investing from a set of transactional decisions to a true investment philosophy, process and strategy.

Low (Minimum) weights

I try to avoid “binary” decisions. In other words, I’ve found that over-simplifying to questions like “am I in or out” of an ETF is a bigger performance detractor than having at least a sliver of an allocation at all times.

Maximum weights

The maximum weights serve as a risk management device. They keep me from getting too excited about any one position.

Neutral weights

This is really the most important of the 3 weight columns. Because while the other 2 deal with the extremes, “neutral” weights are essentially saying to myself “if I could only make changes every several years, what would my long-term position be. As such, it could represent an allocation example for those who want to consider “set and forget” for a portion of their portfolio.

5. Decision System (rotating among positions): ROAR

Position rotation is one of THE keys to effective risk management. Frankly, having a sense of when to get out of the way of a proverbial market freight train coming at us is what allows us to sleep at night. But “a sense” can’t simply be what we feel like. There has to be something consistent, and regimented.

In other words, it is great to have a set of offense and defense ETFs we own. And it is even better to have position size ranges and a neutral rate around each one. But PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT is more than just that. It is creating for yourself a mechanism that governs when changes are made, and in what magnitude.

For me, that’s the ROAR Score. Because I built it based on 30+ years of staring at technical charts and making investment decisions from them. So it works for me.

And when you are part of our community, you can borrow ROAR and use it as much or as little as you like. And how you like. Plus, you can ask me questions about using it, and applying it to specific securities. That’s a big part of our live sessions. And I’m here to coach our subscribers.

ROAR is covered in a separate post, so I’ll simply summarize it here.

• Stands for Return Opportunity And Risk (ROAR)

• Looks at any investment at any time, with the goal of answering the question:

  • “I know I can make money if this goes up in price…but how much risk of major loss am I taking to pursue that return?).

• I’ve simplified ROAR into a set of 3 broad risk conditions an ETF or stock can exhibit at any point in time. Tracking how those fluctuate is at the center of my research. And what we deliver through our analytics site, ROAR.PiTrade.com.

  

• Each of those 3 conditions has a few subsets, creating a scale from 100 to 0. It is entirely based on the combination of strength, opportunity and vulnerability chart pattern at any point in time. Markets are cyclical, and ROAR aims to exploit that fact for our benefit. By seeking out relatively low risk situations, and favoring them over higher risk situations.

  

• ROAR is not a straight “buy or sell” system. That’s all the others! ROAR looks at investing as a balancing act, not as a set of “yes or no” decisions.

Conclusion: The power of a process

You now have a complete, sequential system for building and managing a portfolio. It begins with the simple, powerful act of defining what you will lose and ends with the disciplined execution of that rule.

The power of this approach lies not in prediction, but in process. When fear or greed inevitably strike, you will not rely on your gut. Instead, you will rely on the objective rules you set in a time of calm. That distinction—Process over Emotion—is the true edge that leads to consistent wealth and a smoother investment experience

One application of ETFs we've found very useful in our own investing is as a complement to what's known as a "bond ladder." In this post, we explain what a ladder is, how to create one, and how we use ETFs alongside the predictable stream of cash flow that ladder establishes.

This paper outlines a strategic imperative for modern investors: the separation of “defense” and “offense” within a portfolio to mitigate the heightened volatility of today’s chaotic equity markets.

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I’ve spent more than 30 years as a professional investor. By my count, I’ve devoted more than 130,000 hours to evolving my craft. First as a product manager for portfolio managers, then as a CIO, fiduciary advisor and fund manager. And now, as a semi-retired writer and researcher.

Where has all of that sweat equity led me? To a conclusion that I never would have imagined 30 years ago, much less 5 years ago. For many investors, their core portfolio can consist of as few as 2 ETFs. In this post, I’ll discuss a few of the key, secular reasons I think this way. But perhaps the most striking visual to make my point is this one.

The chart above shows a set of 7 measures of the US stock market, and how they performed during 2025 (through 12/19). You can see that they are all in tight range, with just a few percentage points separating the 7 ETFs.

Those 7 ETFs are all weighted by “market capitalization” a.k.a. company size. But each has a different number of stocks in it. 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 (the S&P 500, where most of the index money goes), 1,000 and 3,000.

What’s the point? DIVERSIFICATION DOESN’T MATTER LIKE IT USED TO.

And each year, that becomes more apparent. If you pride yourself on stock-picking, good for you, have at it, and best of luck. But for most people who see investing as a means to an end, and do not have (or want to devote) the time to learn “everything” about investing for themselves, I think the 2-ETF approach will cover a lot of ground for them.

My response: create a 2-ETF portfolio, and mixing method

Using my own money (which is always part of the process here - I’m the guinea pig), I began the year 2022 by starting to write on the Substack platform, maintaining a portfolio that had nothing but the tickers SPY and BIL in it. SPY tracks the S&P 500 index, and BIL tracks 1-3 year US Treasury Bills. “Stocks and cash.”

Importantly, this was NOT a static mix. That’s one of the issues I have had with “asset allocation” strategies since last century. The classic “60/40” style portfolio has been very popular over the years. That’s where the manager invests 60% in stocks and 40% in bonds, and “rebalances” that mix back to those weights every 3 months.

But as I’ve written about for more than a decade, in many publications, that traditional stock-bond-static asset allocation became a dinosaur years ago. It’s too bad more investors didn’t figure that out sooner. Because in 2022, the year I started tracking this simple yet effective 2-ETF portfolio, T-bill rates rose sharply. And they’ve stayed up.

You know what also happened? Bond yields surged higher. What happens when bond yields do that? Bond prices crash. And so they did. But not T-bills. And while bonds will have their era again (it might be starting now), and T-bill rates will likely become less-desirable in the future, the specific ETFs I use in a 2-ETF portfolio are not limited to SPY and BIL. In fact, they can literally be any 2 ETFs.

Because for some investors, all they need is:

1. A way to play “OFFENSE” - something related to the stock market, most likely.

2. A way to play “DEFENSE” - something that can do well when stocks don’t.

3. A disciplined method of TACTICALLY allocating AMONG those 2 ETFs.

Importantly, this is NOT a choice between 1 ETF and another ETF. I own both of them, all the time. I just shift the mix. As frequently and/or seldomly as indicated by the allocation system I use. In my case, it is the ROAR Score (Return Opportunity And Risk) which is described elsewhere on the ETF Yourself Substack site, and in my articles at Barchart.com and Seeking Alpha. In fact, if you simply ask an AI system to “tell me about ROAR Score Isbitts,” you will get a very fine explanation of what I built there.

ROAR is what I use, and DIY investors can follow my lead on that if they wish. But since the Y in DIY stands for “yourself,” they are free to use whatever mix-maker they wish.

In addition, while a portfolio of only 2 ETFs, 1 each for offense and defense, is a core strategy I use for myself, that doesn’t mean it is the only 2-ETF mix I have. That’s where it is really “to each their own.” But the CONCEPT of the 2-ETF portfolio is the key takeaway here.

The biggest reason that ”simple” 2-ETF portfolios work is due to how markets now operate. It is very different than in decades past.

• Algorithmic trading creates whipsaw moves up/down, the same day and over time

• Indexed investing has become the dominant approach for stock investors

• Individual investors are participating like never before

This has a lot of benefits for many parties. However, it also creates an environment where so many classic “edges” have been neutered, the main one we have left has nothing to do with stock-picking, market timing or leveraged high-risk gambling.

Biggest remaining edge for DIY types? Risk Management!

That does not mean cowering in a corner, waiting for the market to regain some sense of rationality, balance and reasonable valuation. Many debate whether we are in a “bubble” or not. Me? I just want to take what the market gives us, and “engineer” the best outcomes I possibly can, as often as I can.

One way to lose big is to assume that we can consistently find “great stocks” for the long run, or “great trades” for the short run. I’ve spend those 130,000 hours over 30+ years trying to do that. And I still do every day. But it is NOT the core of my approach. It is the garnish. “Take big shots with small amounts of money,” I like to say.

But for the core of the portfolio, the part that will truly determine how I live when I’m working less and need to rely on my accumulated savings? Sign me up for simpler!

Simple does not mean the approach is “dumbed down.” There’s some self-reflection in choosing pairs of ETFs, then rotating intelligently among them.

Some investors are about how much they can make. I’m about how much I can make…WITHOUT LOSING BIG. That chart above shows the dramatic difference between 20-day returns of the SPY ETF (orange) and the Conservative mix of SPY and BIL I have run since 2022 (purple). The range of returns for each on that 20-day basis:

SPY alone: +15% to -12%

SPY/BIL mix, tactically allocated: +3.3% to -2.5%

Now, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, since the goal of my mix is to keep volatility low. It won’t compete with SPY in up markets. It also won’t cause me to break out in a cold sweat when SPY drops 20% in a month, as it tends to do. In recent years, those dips were bought.

If you are concerned that one day, they won’t be, then you care about risk management. It is not a requirement for investors. Unless they want to get a lot of out my work, that is!

I’ve also communicated the 2-ETF portfolio concept through a more Moderate portfolio mix. Same 2 ETFs, SPY and BIL. And same ROAR Score system to determine the allocation between them at any point in time (I updated it weekly for subscribers).

However, the Moderate portfolio mandates that at least 50% must always be in SPY, as opposed to the Conservative portfolio that can go to 0% in SPY and 100% in BIL (it has done so briefly, on occasion). When we add that simple additional constraint, here’s how its volatility compares to SPY alone.

The updated best/worst 20 day periods:

SPY alone: +15% to -12% (unchanged from above, of course)

SPY/BIL mix, tactically allocated: +7.8% to -6.5%

This article is about the 2-ETF concept, and providing some historical insight into it from a RISK MANAGEMENT perspective. We have a full performance recap available as well. And in my opinion, it provides the “proof of concept” that convinces me that 2-ETF mixes should be a central part of my own portfolio going forward. This 4-year test covered the worst year for stocks and bonds combined (2022) since the 1970s, some “normal” periods (2023) and a budding AI bubble (2024-2025), with an embedded flash-crash (February-April 2025) too.

To me, that’s a good reflection of how markets operate today. And it has focused a lot of my research time on enhancing the 2-ETF menu here, as well as our efforts to spread the word about this simple, yet effective approach to investing.

As I see it, modern markets demand simplicity, but not ignorance or arrogance. There’s plenty of both surrounding us in the investing world. So to help crowd out all of the noise, hype and greed, I’m dedicating a lot of our work at ETF Yourself to what I’ve done for more than 30 years professionally: develop, implement and teach investors how to use the realities of modern markets to their advantage. With humility and as much simplicity as I can.

I. Risk and Philosophy (The Foundation)

1. Investment management = risk management.

2. My #1 rule is Avoid Big Loss (ABL).

3. Play offense and defense at the same time in your portfolio.

4. Big losses are catastrophic; small losses are great learning experiences.

5. Know your % of portfolio loss limit on each position before you buy.

6. Prioritize protecting what you have over “How much can I make”

7. Your success is measured by your “absolute return,” not some benchmark.

8. Ignore S&P 500 Envy.

II. ROAR Framework (Reward Opportunity And Risk)

1. Charts are the market telling a story. Our job: learn how to listen!

2. Use the ROAR Score to replace guesswork with objective evidence.

3. Define the risk before attempting the reward.

4. The ROAR Score helps you find “high percentage shots” to take.

5. Position size must be small enough for its failure to not be significant to the total.

6. The goal should be low Standard Deviation Investing (a.k.a. a smoother ride).

7. A portfolio is like a successful sports team: different players blend together to win.

III. Execution and Tactics (The Process)

1. A consistent sell rule is more important than any buy rule.

2. Sell when the stock tells you it is tired (charts help us do that!)

3. Never try to catch a “falling knife.”

4. Tactical Rotation among positions is gradually replacing the old “buy and hold.”

5. Invest only from a pre-approved “Depth Chart” (your shopping list).

6. Total Return, not yield. High yield ETFs just pay you your own money back.

7. Consider portfolio supplements like bond ladders and option collars.

8. Cash is an asset too. Not simply a place to put assets when few good choices exist.

IV. Mindset and Control (The Edge)

1. You do not need a lot of time to invest in a way that pursues your unique goals.

2. The market doesn’t care who you are. Humility is mandatory.

3. Stop trying to predict the future.

4. Your edge is not intelligence; your edge is emotional control.

5. Buy/hold/sell “ratings” are a Wall Street sales tool. Don’t pay them much attention.

6. Every big mistake comes from ignoring the process.

7. Like running a business, the goal is not to be “right,” but to stay in business.

Understanding the ROAR Score: A Guide for DIY Investors

ROAR stands for Reward Opportunity And Risk. Developed by Rob Isbitts, the founder of Sungarden Investment Publishing, this proprietary scoring method was created to dismantle traditional “asset allocation” myths. Instead of relying on stagnant, long-term buy-and-hold models, ROAR is designed to be a flexible, adaptive tool that syncs with the reality of modern, volatile markets.

The Core Philosophy and Purpose

The primary goal of ROAR is to provide DIY investors with a clear assessment of the current risk environment. Unlike traditional “buy/sell/hold” ratings—which can be binary and often fail over time—ROAR evaluates whether market conditions are high-risk, low-risk, or somewhere in between. By shifting the focus from “what” to own to “how much“ of it to own, ROAR empowers investors to make less emotional, more confident decisions throughout different market cycles.

How the ROAR Score Works

The ROAR Score is represented by a number from 0 to 100. This number fluctuates based on a technical and chart-based assessment of a security or index:

• Scores closer to 100: Indicate that a security has a higher potential return relative to the risk being taken at that moment.

• Scores closer to 0: Suggest that while return potential may still exist, the risk required to chase those gains has become disproportionately high.

Essentially, a ROAR Score of 30 implies that a security has a 30% chance of rising 10% before it falls 10%. It is a relative analytic tool rather than a crystal ball, helping investors determine position sizing rather than just “all-in” or “all-out” entry points.

In practice, ROAR Scores should almost never be at 100 or 0. That would imply that a security has virtually no chance of falling hard (if 100), or no chance of rising strongly (if 0). That’s not realistic in investing. So scores tend to fall between 80 and 10, to acknowledge that anything can happen, even if the chance is very slim. Zero and “non-zero” are two different things.

History and Real-World Application

While the underlying concepts for ROAR were developed in the 1990s, the formalized SPY ROAR Score was launched at the end of 2021. Since 2022, Isbitts has used his own capital to manage a “defense-first” portfolio consisting of just two ETFs: SPY (S&P 500) and BIL (1-3 Month T-Bills). The success of this simple model led to the expansion of ROAR “grades” for a wide range of individual stocks and specialized ETFs.

For more on ROAR

Rob writes about topics related to his proprietary ROAR Score in his column at Barchart.com. CLICK HERE to be directed to the ROAR primer he published there in April, 2025.

Executive Summary

This paper outlines a strategic imperative for modern investors: the separation of “defense” and “offense” within a portfolio to mitigate the heig…

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I’ve spent a lot of time trying to bring together my very best learning points from being a professional investor since 1993. I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve seen a lot. And much of what I’ve seen from the folks who sell personalized investing advice...well frankly, it angers me.

It is not any particular person or company. There have been too many billions of marketing dollars spent the past few decades to point a finger somewhere specifically. But that does not hold me back from being frustrated with how far it has gone.

The result is similar to what we all experience in politics, no matter what our beliefs are: identifying what is both factually accurate, and determining how to map that insight to one’s own personal situation, is not just harder than ever. It is close to impossible.

To use one of my favorite analogies (from me, a very light drinker), this is like drinking 20 beers at a party, then downing a 21st and downing yourself...you hit the floor, and wake up later on. And the first thought you have is “ah, it was that 21st beer that did it to me, I’ll stop at 20 next time.”

My concern in these strange times is that many years of mis-education from mainstream/big-budget firms about what DIY investing should be has created a fog that many cannot possibly see through. It leaves them vulnerable when, eventually, they leave themselves in a portfolio position that they would never have accepted if they had a full understanding. Of things like risk management, what drives markets today, and much more.

After spending 27 years being in charge of a set group of families, and making investing decisions for them, we sold our investment advisory practice in 2020 to focus on taking what I think works for those who have made it, want to make more, but above all else do not want to lose it. Because as Warren Buffett said, “when the tide goes out, you can see who was swimming naked.”

To help DIY investors keep their bathing suits intact, here is a comparison table on 20 critical investor topics I selected from all of my decades of writing, investing and coaching.

It’s their way versus your way.

We are here to use my experience, successes and mistakes to help you find your way.

Subscribe now

Yet so much of Wall Street would like you to think it is.

Stock-picking services that produce mediocre results, putting excitement above risk management, and using tired approaches to allocating assets, and limiting themselves to a constrained investing toolbox. We say enough!

The markets of the 2020s require a different approach for a rapidly-growing group of serious investors who prioritize keeping what they have, then making as much as they can beyond that. Sure, they can try getting stock picks from dozens of sources.

But as the expression goes, that feeds you for a day. If you want to learn how to fish (for a well-structured, defensive-minded investment portfolio), you need to move up this INVESTOR’S LEARNING CURVE...without falling off the mountain (red zones on right).

Investing successfully today means

1. Manage risk

2. Keep it simple

3. Stay humble

What you get for $15/month or $150/year:

• The Weekly ROAR, published each Tuesday. Our comprehensive private letter to paying subscribers, featuring Rob’s latest market views, charts and commentary.

• Actionable ETF model portfolios, updated Tuesdays and when conditions dictate.

• Quarterly live sessions in our “clubroom” on Zoom, where Rob presents his latest thinking, and answers your questions.

• Video library contains educational clips that we’ve recorded, and the latest session recording is updated within 24 hours of the live event.

In addition, for $600/year, Premium members will get:

• Weekly live sessions in our “clubroom” on Zoom, where Rob presents his latest thinking, and answers your questions.

• Ongoing coaching on typically under-covered, value-added strategies, such as bond ladders and option collars.

• One thirty minute private Q&A session.

The Simple (yet very effective) 2-ETF Portfolio

Sungarden Founder Rob Isbitts, leader of ETF Yourself, has run this 2-ETF portfolio, simply allocating to SPY (stocks) and BIL (cash) with his own money since the start of 2022. He shares it with his paying subscribers every Tuesday in The Weekly ROAR. It is based on the ROAR* Score he created to consolidate his 40 years of charting stocks and funds.

* ROAR = Return Opportunity And Risk

And, here’s a second, more moderate-risk version of that 2-ETF concept. In this portfolio, Rob allocates 50% to the SPY ETF and allocates the other 50% using the ROAR Score approach.

And, our Long-Short model takes the 2-ETF model and adds a “go anywhere” segment that can own any US-traded ETF.

The Allocation portfolio

We believe in “playing offense and defense at the same time.” We provide you with portfolio models ranging from 2-ETF models like the one shown above, to our Allocation model that selects from and rotates among the 12 “macro market” ETFs shown here.

This model was created more recently, but we created a back-tested performance analysis based on the “neutral” allocation Rob uses to actively manage and allocate to most but not all of those 12 ETFs at any time.

ROAR Scores: for better risk management

Most investment grading systems are based on how much you can make, without regard to the risk of major loss attached to trying to profit. ROAR approaches it differently, using technical analysis to ask “what are the chances that the next major move will be up and not down?” It’s not about “how much I can make” but rather “how can I not lose big?”

Here’s a guide we regularly review with Club members, which converts Rob’s experience analyzing chart patterns to ROAR Scores.

At Sungarden we use our proprietary ROAR Scores to:

• Assess the broader risk climate (for our 2-ETF and other portfolios)

• For an ETF or single stock, estimate: “how much risk is attached to the return I’m trying to earn?”

Because any security can go up in price at any time. But the difference between any 2 investments is the amount of major risk involved.

Rob Isbitts: Investing “Lifer” and your group leader

From one of Rob’s educational presentations for MoneyShow

Rob learned technical analysis using graph paper and pencil when his late father taught him at age 16. He then practiced professionally as an advisor and fund manager, until he sold his practice and retired in 2020.

Now, he uses that experience as the engine, to help self-directed investors to develop consistent investment discipline on their own terms. But with the benefit of Rob’s decades “in the trenches,” including navigating every bear market since 1987.

Since retiring from running his investment advisory firm, Rob has written more than 1,000 articles for Seeking Alpha, Barchart, Forbes and other publications. Sungarden Investors Club was created to allow self-directed investors to interact with Rob, rather than just reading his articles.

KISS: Keep It Simple, Sungarden!

We all try to make our lives as simple as possible, without sacrificing quality and bottom-line results. Yet so many investing services flood their subscribers with data and complexity. To us, investing for yourself is about preventing bad habits and learning to make clear, consistent decisions within the framework you set yourself.

This club leads by example, through a combination of live learning, proactive responses to Club member questions, and practical model portfolios. Rob shows you his own decision-making process, and you personalize it for yourself.

Most importantly, we are always striving to make our members smarter and more self-reliant. While reducing stress and complexity that often accompanies learning to invest for yourself.

Rob Isbitts has managed money professionally since the late 1990s, and these portfolios take those 130,000 hours of hands-on experience, and right-size them for self-directed investors learning to navigate contemporary markets.

Is it worth it?

If you are expecting the typical answer of “yes, for everyone”...you don’t know us yet! You see, Rob and his wife/business partner Dana have been working together for more than 30 years.

They were part of a $300mm RIA firm where Rob was a partner. Then Rob spent a year as the Chief Investment Strategist for a $3 billion RIA firm, before he and Dana started and ran their own RIA firm from 2012, selling it in 2020.

During that time, high net worth clients typically paid $20,000-$40,000 a year for a full-service advisory relationship. While that business delivered customized risk assessment and goals analysis, portfolio selection, trading and 1:1 advice, it was centered around the same investing philosophy and process Rob has used for decades.

That same risk-managed portfolio approach is the one he discusses and teaches every week at our live sessions, and through our weekly letter. Delivered in a DIY format here, for $150 (or $600 for Premium) a year.

Ready to ROAR with us?

• Risk management is not everyone’s priority. Is it yours?

• Simplicity is not what Wall Street is about. What about you?

• ETFs and bonds are not as “sexy” as stocks. What do you think?

ETF Yourself:

We’re not for everyone. But we might be for you.

Your shirt has a collar, your dog wears a collar. But what about your investment strategy? Rob Isbitts, founder of Sungarden Investment Publishing and creator of ETFYourself.com, has written about the risk management and return enhancing benefits of option collars at Barchart and Seeking Alpha. He used them extensively during his former career as investment advisor and mutual fund manager.

Now, he’s put decades of insight and experience on this topic into a plain-language strategy paper. The Collar Advantage: Demystifying Option Collars for DIY Investors.

This strategy paper is being shared only with long-term paid subscribers of our work. If you sign up for 1 month of ETF Yourself ($15 per month or $150 for the full year)), we’ll make it available to you as a thanks for trying the service.

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“Well then, how about an option collar…disguised as a dose of lithium?” - Rob Isbitts, Founder, Sungarden Investment Publishing

Op…

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This article is one of the reasons I still work, 5 years after selling my investment advisory practice. Simply put, I have more to give to the only industry I have worked in since 1986.

Now as a researcher and publisher, I focus more on finding ways to transfer my knowledge and experience to a wide range of investors. One way I am able to do this is via intellectual property I've developed, including the ROAR Score for stocks and ETFs, which is the subject of this article that was published today at Barchart.

My late father taught me to chart stocks by hand when I was 16 years old. I was his only student. But in his memory, being able to simplify a complex subject, and add tools to help a wide range of investors, is where it's at for me. If you are so inclined, read this report, and share it with a friend.

ROAR Score Report