The Awesome Portfolio

On September 8, 2026, my seventh book, The Awesome Portfolio, will be published by Harriman House. Yes, my seventh book.

Lots of people ask me what the secret is to writing so many books. I will tell you.

1. Turn on the computer.

2. Open Microsoft Word.

3. Start typing.

Anyway, writing a book is not really that big of a deal these days—lots of people write books. And writing a book, even one that only sells 15 copies, is a big achievement. It shows that you can sit down and concentrate on something for a long period of time. It might not be any good, but sitting down and concentrating on something is a virtue.

The Awesome Portfolio is a very good book. You are probably familiar with the idea by now. Putting all your money in the S&P 500 is dumb. I mean, the returns are great, but when you invest in the index, not only do you get the returns of the index, but you also get the volatility of the index. And the volatility of the S&P 500 is breathtaking. When you tell someone that they should put all their money in an index fund and leave it there, riding out the ups and downs of the market, honestly, it’s not terrible advice. Because if you can do it, you’ll have millions at retirement. But you can’t do it; you’ll get shaken out by the volatility. And even if you don’t get shaken out by the volatility, there will be long periods where you’re miserable.

What if you could invest in something that returned a little bit less, that gave you about half the volatility and only a fraction of the drawdowns? That’s the Awesome Portfolio.

I’m not going to get into the details of it here (because I want you to buy the book), but let’s just say that it’s very easy to implement and maintain over time. I can tell you that there are a lot of people who are going to hate this book. Like, every financial advisor in the world. I bet if you read this book and marched into a financial advisor’s office with a copy and told them to read it, and they read it, they would probably tell you to ignore the crazy guy in South Carolina that wears all black and stick with the 60/40 allocation or something like it. If everyone read the book, and the Awesome Portfolio caught on, then FAs wouldn’t be able to get GI Joe with the kung fu grip at Christmas. They would be getting Amazon gift cards for $15.

I’m joking but also serious. This is a revolutionary idea. I’ve written six other books, but none of them have the potential to change the world like The Awesome Portfolio does. For the better, I might add. No more stress in investing. You can go chase a white ball around or do macramé or whatever it is you do with your spare time and not pay one lick of attention to what is going on in the market.

This is a portfolio that will grow steadily over time and return a little bit less than a stock index fund, but you don’t even care about that because the people in stock index funds won’t get the advertised returns anyway—because in the first bear market that comes along, they’ll panic and puke everything. The worst year that the Awesome Portfolio has ever had is down about 12%. The worst year that the stock market has had is much worse than that. If you invest in all stocks, you are signing up for at least one 50%+ drawdown over the course of your investing career. Charlie Munger says so. He says that if you can’t stomach a 50% drop in stocks, then you have no business investing in stocks. Most people can’t stomach it, so you should invest in something that is diversified across asset classes.

Anyway, I’m not going to be able to sell the idea adequately in an 800-word newsletter, so I highly suggest you preorder the book and read it when it comes out. One bonus (for me): If everyone on this newsletter distribution preordered a copy of the book, it would make The New York Times Best Seller list. And as you probably know, the retailers will give you the preorder price guarantee, so when the book is released, you’ll probably pay a much lower price. There’s no downside here. And if you’re not a big reader, you should know that this book is written for people who are not big readers, as it’s not too long. But I can’t emphasize this enough: It will change the way you think about investing. Forever.

Please go here to preorder the book. They say the first rule of marketing is that the average person needs to be reminded six times before they buy something. So, I’ll be writing about it five more times. Harassing you, actually. So smash the buy button lustily.

Jared Dillian, MFA