16 asset classes, 16 years
Hover any tile to follow that asset across every year. Click to pin.
ASSET CLASSES (CLICK TO PIN)
WHAT TO LOOK FOR
Hover US Tech — top of the chart in 2013, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2023, 2024, then dead last in 2022.
Now hover Brent Oil — 16 years, 16 wildly different ranks. The leaders change. That's the point.
One asset, every year
Pick an asset class. Its tiles stand out across the chart while the rest fade into the patchwork.
Darker = higher rank that year. Notice the gaps between top-3 years and bottom-3 years — the same asset, the same world.
Two assets, side by side
Pick any two asset classes. We'll show you when they moved together, when they moved apart, and how strongly they're related — the heart of why diversification works.
ASSET A
ASSET B
ANNUAL RETURNS
TRY THESE PAIRS
The middle is where plans live
What if you'd held an equal blend of every asset class each year, vs always picking the eventual winner or loser? The blend never wins. It also never loses. It just compounds.
ANNUAL RETURNS BY YEAR
Year's best asset
Equal-weight blend (Becketts illustration)
Year's worst asset
THE BECKETTS VIEW
We can't pick the winner each January — and neither can anyone else, reliably.
What we can do is build a mix that's robust to many possible futures, then review it quarterly through our Investment Committee.
That's what diversification looks like in practice — and it's why we plan first, invest second.
The smooth ride and the rollercoaster
Volatility (σ) measures how much an asset's returns swing year to year. Cash barely moves. Brent Oil moves more in a year than most assets do in a decade. A good plan accepts the right amount of swing for the journey you're on.
STEADY THROUGH THE STORM
Cash, gilts, corporate bonds and global bonds all sit at the calmer end. They aren't where wealth grows fastest — they're where wealth holds steady when things wobble.
THE PRICE OF GROWTH
US Tech averages +17.7% a year — the highest of any asset class. It also lost 24% in 2022. Higher long-term return, much harder ride.
WHY OIL ISN'T A PLAN
Brent Oil's range from worst to best is 124 percentage points. It's been a top-3 asset and a bottom-3 asset multiple times. Useful to think about, hard to plan around.