Lesson One · The Mix
Your is the whole basket — not any single fund inside it.
When you combine investments across , the result is a . The mix — your — drives most of your return and almost all of your risk. Studies consistently find that asset allocation explains roughly 90% of long-run portfolio behaviour, much more than which specific funds you pick. A 60/40 portfolio behaves very differently from an 80/20 portfolio, regardless of which 60% stocks fund you use.
“The fund picks matter at the margin. The allocation picks matter at the centre.”