Most 401(k) participants are stuck choosing from a limited fund menu with no guidance on how to combine those funds effectively. Financial advisors have no incentive to help — the captive retirement plan market generates no commissions worth chasing.
Save. Plan. Retire. changes that.
We apply institutional-grade quantitative methods — the same portfolio optimization techniques used by endowments and pension funds — to the specific fund lineups available in major employer 401(k) plans. No generic advice. No one-size-fits-all target date funds. Just mathematically rigorous, academically defensible portfolio optimization tailored to the funds you actually have access to.
What We Publish
Each month, we run our proprietary optimizer against the equity fund lineups of the largest employer 401(k) plans in the United States and publish the results — free.
Every report includes:
- Optimal equity fund weights for your plan’s specific fund menu
- Historical performance analysis with rolling out-of-sample backtests
- Risk metrics including downside capture, maximum drawdown, and volatility
- Comparison against naive equal-weight and target date fund benchmarks
Our Methodology
Our optimizer maximizes the Upside Potential Ratio — a measure of how effectively a portfolio captures gains relative to the downside risk it takes on. Unlike traditional mean-variance optimization, this approach is specifically designed for investors who want to maximize participation in market upside while minimizing exposure to large drawdowns.
The model incorporates Bayes-Stein shrinkage estimation, bootstrap aggregation, and entropy regularization to produce stable, robust allocations that don’t overfit to historical noise.
About the Author
John B. Vickers is a quantitative finance researcher focused on retirement portfolio optimization. His work applies peer-reviewed academic methods to the practical problem of 401(k) fund selection, bridging the gap between institutional portfolio theory and the constrained investment menus available to everyday retirement savers.
Disclaimer: Save. Plan. Retire. provides educational content only and does not constitute financial, tax, or legal advice. All optimization results are hypothetical illustrations of mathematical principles and do not represent investment recommendations. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions.