Cameron Gleeson

That said, if you knew that this investor was going to be able to quarantine some of their savings and have that invested in the market and not need to draw down on it, you know, Geary might be a really great solution for them and those ETFs can definitely provide a role.

So I guess it does depend a little bit on your risk appetite.

And so this investor, I'm sort of thinking, I mean, typically when you're very early on, really it's that equation as to how much money do I have to protect today versus how long is my window in terms of how long will I be working?

And what money am I going to be able to put into markets tomorrow if they were to fall?

So I guess the starting assumption that I have is, and this is your general finance theory, is that the asset which should have the highest expected return but also greatest volatility is equities.

So I'm focusing on capital growth.

I'm going to allocate to equities.

The question of adding defensive assets is one of what's my risk tolerance?

How much do I need to dial down the volatility of my portfolio to ensure I can keep allocating to equities along the way?

So if I did have some risk aversion, maybe I'm going to add some fixed rate bonds that provide potentially equity diversification or gold or cash.

to reduce that volatility so the next time I get to the end of the month and I've got my $1,000, I can make sure I continue to put that money into the portfolio at say a 90-10 split or whatever it might be, just keep investing.

So that's, in my view, the role of defensive assets is really ensuring you can keep investing in the growth assets.

And that becomes a very personal thing in terms of risk tolerance and your own behavior when under stress, which often, you know, we only really find out our true risk aversion when markets start falling.

When markets going up, everyone feels really good about, you know, going all into equities.

It's really about knowing yourself and having the discipline to keep investing.

That's the sort of behavior you want to create.

And that's where defensive assets can be really useful in reinforcing that behavior.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Always a pleasure.