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The split of capital across asset classes, geographies, and time horizons accounts for most of what a portfolio does afterwards. We think that split deserves an explicit decision and a written rationale.
Allocation starts with a handful of questions. What is the capital for? How long can it stay committed? How much variability in outcome is tolerable? What has to stay liquid, and when? The answers set the weighting across asset classes far more than any single market view does.
We help clients write those constraints down rather than leave them to be inferred. The resulting framework usually sets ranges instead of point targets, which leaves room to respond to conditions without quietly rewriting the logic of the plan.
Then markets move and the weights drift. Deciding in advance how and when a portfolio is brought back into line matters as much as the original allocation. Without that step, risk accumulates by default. An equity weighting set at one level can sit well above it after two strong years, and nobody has actually decided to take the extra risk.
How long capital can stay committed, and what has to be reachable before then.
Willingness to sit through a bad year, and the separate question of whether a bad year can be absorbed.
Who sets the ranges, who may move outside them, and what has to happen first.