On March 18, our Aggressive portfolio crossed the 300% mark since inception (3/31/2002). Recent weakness in the markets held us under this meaningless but psychologically cool level. It took us just shy of 13 years. That's an annualized return of about 11.25%. No other so-called fund-of-funds (portfolios of other funds) in Morningstar's massive fund database started before 2004 have as high an annualized return.

You'd never guess this portfolio's winning ways from April's relatively crummy performance, but through the long and wild swings in the market, we've been beating the S&P 500. (The Vanguard 500 Index fund was up "just" 135% with dividends during this same stretch.) We'll have more to say on this in coming weeks, but the big focus here is not the 300% of the past, but where the next 300% is going to come from.

For more on our performance calculations, please go here.

Our Conservative portfolio was up 0.49% in April. Our Aggressive portfolio fell 0.48%. Benchmark Vanguard funds for April 2015: Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX) up 0.95%; Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund (VBMFX) down 0.36%; Vanguard Developed Markets Index Fund (VTMGX) up 4.07%; Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index (VEIEX) up 7.79%; Vanguard Star Fund (VGSTX), a total global balanced portfolio, gained 0.83%.

We had a month of wide dispersion. Our top fund, BKF, was up 11.37% on a great month in general for emerging markets (after years of relative disappointment). Oil rebounded sharply, sending our remaining oil short PowerShares DB Crude Oil Dble Short (DTO) down 43.76%. Of course, we sold 60% of the shares at $111.15 on March 13, a stone's throw from the year's high of $123.81 on this volatile leveraged fund, so the damage was minimized.

Most of our stock funds actually beat the S&P 500 in April, but longer-term bond funds were hit hard, dragging down our portfolios. The exception to the bond slide is our newly added SPDR Barclays Intl. Treasury (BWX), which trades more on currency exchange rates than interest rates and was up almost 2% on a recently strong U.S. dollar. PRIMECAP Odyssey Growth (POGRX) posted a weak month, with a 1.3% slide. This now popular and famous fund is on our watch list to sell.

March was a pretty lousy month for stocks globally. The 2015 market is turning out to be a little topsy-turvy, with quick rebounds and drops. Our Conservativeportfolio moved more or less with the markets, while our more uniquely positioned Aggressive portfolio bucked the benchmarks with a nice gain, giving us a decent spread of about 4% over the S&P 500 thus far in 2015. ...read the rest of this article»

What the interest rate gods giveth in January, they taketh away in February. The S&P rebounded to new highs, and we're even breaking through Nasdaq 5,000 again—just like we did in March, 2000! The reality of fabulous tech earnings growth finally caught up with NASDAQ prices of 15 years ago.  ...read the rest of this article»

So far, so good. 2015 is off to a nice start. At least for us. The S&P 500 was down 3% while both of our portfolios were up just over 2%. That's a 5% performance gap, and it's only been four weeks. ...read the rest of this article»

Another year is in the can, and what a year it was. On the surface, 2014 was a great one: the economy ended on a high note and the U.S. stock market shook off a late-year slide to post a 13.51% 12-month return. This on top of the bond market's near 6% gain (and 2014 was supposed to be the year of the great bond collapse). How could an investor perform poorly in such an environment? All too easily, it turns out. ...read the rest of this article»

The U.S. stock market, fueled at least partially by (what now seems like) permanently low interest rates and a lack of investment opportunity abroad, is on to new highs again. The strange thing is that oil is plunging, non-U.S. economies are weak, and recent Black Friday sales were lackluster. You'd almost think we were in another global recession.  ...read the rest of this article»

And poof it was gone. So much for our stock market correction, which abruptly reversed course a mere month after its start and before it became a 10% "correction" (at least for U.S. stocks). The recovery was slightly faster than the drop, and as of now has taken the stock market a tad higher than the previous peak of September 18th.  ...read the rest of this article»

September was a down month all around, except for those who are aggressively shorting. Although we are doing a little of that in our Aggressive portfolio, our modest short allocation didn't generate enough upside to make up for the dual slides in bonds and stocks.  ...read the rest of this article»

It seems the only record left to break is the old high in the NASDAQ, circa March 10th 2000. The tech-heavy benchmark finished that day at a delirious 5,048.62 — a mere 10% rise from today's level. If only Pets.com stuck around long enough to make an app with GPS tracking of your dog food order... ...read the rest of this article»

Stocks finally took a breather at the end of the month as investor enthusiasm for newer startup and growth stocks may have hit an old economy wall of debt problems in Argentina and political instability in multiple locations. The global stock and bond market can't live on Facebook earnings and iPhone 6 expectations alone.  ...read the rest of this article»