Resolve Riffs Investment Podcast · ReSolve Asset Management

Rafael Ortega: Using Return Stacking To Build an All-Terrain Portfolio

·1 hr 9 min·4 clips

Rafael Ortega says return stacking can build a truly diversified portfolio at 8% or 12% volatility without losing balance.

1. Resolve Riffs Investment Podcast episode “Rafael Ortega: Using Return Stacking To Build an All-Terrain Portfolio” centers on Ortega’s path from permanent portfolio ideas to return stacking. 2. Adam Butler hosts Rafael Ortega, a Spanish investor and senior investment fund manager at Anbank Wealth Management, and Ortega matters because he manages permanent portfolio ideas, all-terrain returns, and custom portfolios. 3. The episode asks whether a portfolio can be truly diversified across assets and strategies while still hitting a target volatility such as 8% or 12%. 4. Ortega says he started in engineering, then worked briefly at a large consultancy firm in Madrid before returning to Valencia during a family business crisis. 5. He describes his mother’s small business, his father’s death, and the need to think about what to do with family savings after expenses were covered. 6. Ortega says he found value investing culture in Spain, but also saw that commercial-bank solutions were expensive closet index funds. 7. He says the value-investing message “price is what matters” did not fit his experience when savings were down 50% and needed to be available. 8. Ortega explains that he became drawn to Harry Browne’s permanent portfolio because it matched economic cycles with stocks, bonds, gold, and cash. 9. He says the framework works because different assets and strategies behave differently across growth, deflation, inflation, and recession environments. 10. Butler adds that long-duration bonds matter for balance, because equity and bond volatility should be closer together than many investors assume. 11. Ortega says he built his first personal and family portfolio around the permanent portfolio, then struggled to persuade banks to include long-term bonds and gold. 12. He says he later found that no one in Spain or the Spanish internet world was talking about permanent portfolio or all-weather ideas. 13. That gap led him to pursue advisory licensing, build a client community, and keep studying implementation details for years. 14. Ortega says he later tried to make the portfolio less conservative and more like a 60/40-risk profile, but every attempt increased equity concentration. 15. He says adding diversifiers reduced volatility and return, while increasing equities restored return but destroyed balance. 16. Butler shows an equal-risk-contribution comparison across global equities, commodities, 10-year treasuries, and trend following, and Ortega says the smoother path is often more boring in real life. 17. Ortega says the result of a balanced portfolio is a lower-volatility line that many investors abandon because it feels like they are leaving money on the table. 18. The conversation is technical, reflective, and practical, with Butler frequently pausing to unpack charts and Ortega explaining the Spanish implementation challenge. 19. Investors interested in portfolio construction, diversification, and risk balancing would likely get the most from this episode. 20. Investors looking for stock-picking ideas or a quick market call will probably skip it.

As heard by us

Ortega argues for a diversified, all-weather portfolio tuned to the volatility investors actually want.

Ortega makes a solid case for diversification across assets and strategies, with the portfolio tuned to the level of volatility an investor can actually live with.

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Why you'd press play

You want a portfolio design conversation that targets risk without turning into a stock-picking sermon or sales pitch.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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