Thanks for participating on the blog. Your comments are appreciated, and I also have some comments.

I acknowledge that I did not state explicitly in this point that the better return to date this year is due to risk reduction rather than seeking higher returns (although my previous post on the importance of asset allocation stressed that risk reduction was the reason to consider how your assets were allocated), so I will state it here: the better return in the portfolio to date is due to risk reduction.

However, I would disagree with this result being the result of luck. Reducing risk, as you state, is “a good idea”, and the fact that asset allocation reduces it and in this case provided a better return isn’t due to luck–it’s due to planning. I only had the assets allocated the way they were because I planned for it, and the fruits of good planning aren’t due to luck.