I went shoe shopping today for the first time in a while, and I forgot just how frustrating it can be.  Finding a nice pair of shoes seems like it should be a pretty simple task these days, but the number of options makes it much more difficult than you’d think! It’s kinda surreal to walk through aisles and aisles of shoes and immediately dislike about 90% of them for one reason or another, and even the ones you like may not be that comfortable once you try them on.  Buying shoes can be a real pain.

Well if you think about it, finding a good portfolio is a similar experience — there are lots of good options but very few easy answers.  I do my best to curate some of the best options to avoid the cheap knockoffs likely to wear a hole in the sole on the first walk, but just like there’s no one pair of shoes for every person there’a also no single best portfolio for every investor.  So you’ve gotta try them on for yourself.

I once knew a guy who was really into woodworking.  One of the more fascinating things about him was that he not only made his own furniture but also was quite proud of his collection of hand-made woodworking tools.  I once asked him why he preferred those tools to mass-produced alternatives.  Among several reasons, “They do what I want”.

Some casual investors may wonder why I spend so much time investigating things like modeling mid caps and figuring out how to measure the error of older international bond data in backtesting calculations.  While I certainly find this kind of information intellectually interesting, I admit that it sometimes becomes a chore and I can see why most people steer clear.  The upside to all the groundwork, however, is that it expands my collection of tools and allows me to do what I want — explore interesting portfolios previously off limits simply due to lack of data.

Like, for example, the 7Twelve Portfolio.