Joe, I am quite naive in such matters, but such questions have intrigued me. I will make a few comments, though.
In my experience, the term "balance" by investment advisors means revising a person's investments to return to some previously agreed upon proportions of the whole for major investment categories like equities, bonds, and cash. If I am correct, you might not be using the term in that manner. The investment advice that caught my attention most recently is shown in the 2013 PBS Frontline video below. It basically suggests to me that Index funds are better than managed funds for most people. (But my own experience with trying an Index fund has corresponded with the really flat 2015 year which has been one of the worst of late.) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/index-funds-the-key-to-saving-for-retirement/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/retirement-gamble/ Your idea of studying the distributions of returns makes good sense to me, but frankly I am pessimistic about it yielding discoveries that would be to my benefit. Quite by coincidence I just discovered the breadth of stackexchange.com, having benefitted greatly from its predecessor stackoverflow.com. Apparently stackexchange now contains 150+ "communities", one of which is "Personal Finance and Money": money.stackexchange.com . I suspect your question/proposal would be welcome there. Thanks for sharing, -- (B=) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
