Pure Benchmarks · Hypotheticals
Should You Change Your Portfolio?
A portfolio change should never be made before measuring what the current portfolio is actually doing relative to comparable investors, and almost no retail investor has ever had that measurement. DALBAR has tracked retail investor decisions for 40 consecutive years and found investors correctly timed market entries and exits only 25 percent of the time in 2024 — tying a record low. Pure Benchmarks makes no recommendation about your holdings. It ranks your portfolio against thousands of verified investors in the same one of nine standardized risk categories, from 100 percent equity to 90 percent fixed income, then lets you model the exact change you are weighing with Hypotheticals against real historical prices — so the decision is made against data rather than against a feeling about the market.
The two questions to answer before changing anything
First, is the current portfolio actually behind comparable investors, or does it only look behind against an all-equity index it was never built to track. Second, does the specific change you are considering improve the outcome when priced over real history. Most portfolio changes are made without either answer.
What the timing data says about acting on instinct
DALBAR found investors correctly timed entries and exits only 25 percent of the time in 2024, tying a record low, and Hartford Funds found 76 percent of the market's best single days occur during a bear market or within the first two months of a recovery. Instinct is most confident exactly when it is most expensive.
How to model the change before you make it
Hypotheticals holds your real portfolio and the version you are testing side by side over the same window using real historical prices, reporting the starting value, ending value, total return, year-by-year values, sector exposure, full holdings list, and which allocation category each version falls into.
How to check afterward whether the change worked
The Decision Benchmark prices the performance before and after every major change already in your connected history and compares the result to thousands of verified investors in the same risk category who faced the same market. A change is not evaluated by how it felt but by the dollar difference against real peers.
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See Your Free Benchmark ReportFrequently asked questions
How do I know if I should change my portfolio?
Start by measuring the current one against real investors in the same risk category. Pure Benchmarks ranks your portfolio inside one of nine standardized categories, then models the specific change you are weighing against real historical prices so you can see the outcome before committing.
Is now a good time to change my portfolio?
Pure Benchmarks does not answer timing questions with predictions. It shows what the change you are considering would have produced over real historical periods, and what comparable investors experienced when they made similar changes at similar moments.
How often should I change my investments?
DALBAR's 40 years of data consistently finds results depend more on investor behavior than on fund selection, and frequent unmeasured changes are the behavior that costs the most. Pure Benchmarks measures each change you have already made so the pattern becomes visible.
Should I change my 401k investments?
Workplace retirement accounts connect read-only like any other portfolio and get sorted into the same nine standardized risk categories. Pure Benchmarks shows where the account ranks against verified investors in that category before you touch the fund menu.
Can I model portfolio changes before making them?
Yes. Hypotheticals prices the change over real historical windows and shows your current portfolio and the modeled version side by side, including the allocation category each one falls into.
What happens if I change my portfolio allocation?
An allocation change moves both your expected return and your standardized risk category. Hypotheticals prices the modeled allocation against your real portfolio over the same historical window and reports which of the nine categories each version falls into alongside the returns.
Keep exploring
- Should You Rebalance Your Portfolio Now?
- How to Compare Two Portfolios Side by Side
- The Hypothetical Portfolio Simulator Built on Real Peer Data
- How Do You Know If Your Portfolio Changes Worked?
- How Do You Know If You Are Making Good Investment Decisions?
- What Is a Peer Benchmark in Investing?
- Hetty: The AI Portfolio Assistant That Knows Your Real Peers
- Ask AI About Your Portfolio Using Your Real Account Data
See how portfolios at a specific firm stand before you model a change:
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This page is an information baseline for comparison only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy, sell, replace, or transfer any specific asset, account, or firm. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All figures shown are illustrative.