Vanguard — 50 / 35 / 15

ⓘ Active paper bot. The unlevered buy-and-hold benchmark, running on Alpaca paper and trading daily at 10:00 ET. The Ark runs the same VGT/SMH/GLD engine vol-targeted and levered.

The tech-growth core: 50% VGT · 35% SMH · 15% GLD, bought and held, rebalanced when any weight drifts more than 5 points, plus once each quarter (first trading day of Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct). Semis add the return, gold cushions the crash. The ungated backtest below shows ~23%/yr (2012–26); the live version trend-gates the SMH sleeve and tested 16.6%/yr over 2004–26 with a smaller worst drop.

Paper · Alpaca W7J

Buy-and-hold

Live — the money & P&L

Your live account value, today's move, and holdings vs. the 50/35/15 target.

Daily P&L vs on-track baseline

Vanguard vs. plain VGT vs. SPY — growth of $100 (backtest, 2012–2026, log scale)

Ungated 50/35/15 (no SMH gate / DBMF park), rebalanced daily. Vanguard (green) finishes above VGT with the same worst drawdown (both −35%) — the semis lift the return. Log scale.

Vanguard — ungated 50/35/15 VGT SPY

The numbers (EODHD, 2012–2026)

Full-period backtest on survivorship-free EODHD data, ungated 50/35/15 (no SMH gate / DBMF park). It beats VGT on return and Sharpe at the same −35% worst drop. The live gated version tested 16.6%/yr, −37% worst drop over 2004–26.

Strategy	CAGR	Sharpe	Max drawdown

The allocation

VGT 50% SMH 35% GLD 15%

VGT — Vanguard Info Tech	The core. Big-cap tech/software, the growth engine.
SMH — Semiconductors	The accelerant. Adds return VGT alone leaves on the table.
GLD — Gold	The shock absorber. Uncorrelated; trims the crash depth.

Rebalances when any weight drifts more than 5 points, plus once each quarter (first trading day of Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct). VGT & GLD are held through everything; only the SMH sleeve is trend-gated (200-day MA + ATR band + volume + min-hold) — the gate costs a little return (~1.3 pts/yr) but cuts the worst drop. When SMH is below the gate its 35% parks in DBMF (managed futures, which tends to rise when stocks fall) instead of cash. No leverage. Backtest: ungated 17.9%/−49% DD/0.87 → SMH-gated 16.6%/−37% DD/0.95 Sharpe.