The slow game: three funds, when to put a lump sum to work, and the risks that only show up over decades.
- The three-fund portfolio and why it is hard to beat
Three index funds — total U.S. stock, total international stock, total bond — cost a few hundredths of a percent a year and hold most of the world's investable companies. Why that is so hard to beat, what it cannot do, and the one decision it leaves you.
4 MIN · REVIEWED OCT 2026
- Rebalancing — how often, and what it is really for
A 60/40 portfolio left alone since 1926 would have spent most of its life as an 84/16 one. Rebalancing is the act of putting it back, and the evidence says it is risk control, not a return source — once a year, or at a 5% drift, is about as good as it gets, and most of the rest is cost.
5 MIN · REVIEWED OCT 2026
- Dollar-cost averaging vs lump sum: the evidence
Investing a windfall all at once has beaten spreading it over months about two-thirds of the time in every market Vanguard tested. Why averaging still has a case, and the retirement-era cousin of this question — the order your returns arrive in.
5 MIN · REVIEWED OCT 2026
- Taxes: what the account decides before the market does
Two investors can make the same trades and keep very different amounts, because the account, the holding period and the instrument set the tax before the market sets the return. The 2026 thresholds, the 60/40 rule for futures, the wash-sale rule and the crypto bill that would extend it, what brokers now report, and the strategy that works for almost everyone.
5 MIN · REVIEWED OCT 2026
Education, not advice. Nothing on this page recommends buying or selling anything, and nothing is a promise of results — every figure is hypothetical. TOTH does not provide investment advice. New to the vocabulary? The glossary has plain definitions.