25/25/25/25 is the new 60/40

I don't disagree with the direction. The instinct is right. Indian equity has been quiet for eighteen months. The rupee has been weak. American AI has been ripping. Korean and Taiwanese semiconductor names lapped the field. Gold and silver had outlier years. For a family watching their wealth statement and hearing about other people's, the maths feels inescapable.

I don't disagree. We have been doing global investing for our families since 2022. Including 2022 itself, when both US tech and Chinese equity fell together, and we bought.

What I won't do, and what no patient investor should do, is buy the new direction at the price the crowd is paying for it today.

This is an essay about the difference.

What 60/40 was, and why it lasted in India

For nearly two decades, the conversation about asset allocation in Indian wealth circled around a borrowed phrase: sixty in equity, forty in debt. The framework was American by origin and rough in fit, and yet it lasted. It lasted because of three honest reasons.

It was easy to operate. Equity rose, you trimmed; equity fell, you added. A family understood it in one conversation. The market was simpler then. The framework was a sensible answer to it.

There was nothing else readily available. Twenty years ago, an Indian resident's options were domestic equity, domestic debt, gold in a locker, possibly a piece of property. International was a curiosity for the very wealthy. SIFs did not exist. Sovereign gold bonds were a future category. Crypto ETFs were inconceivable.

The information landscape was narrow. The average investor saw the markets through Indian newspapers and the BSE close on the evening news. What was happening in Korean tech, in Taiwan, in US AI — those stories did not reach the breakfast table.

None of these make the framework wrong. They make it a sensible product of its time. That time has ended.

What changed

Three things moved, almost quietly, over the last five years.

The toolbox filled in. Specialised Investment Funds are now a SEBI category. Sovereign gold bonds are accessible at scale. International equity is a click away — through GIFT City for the resident, through any global broker for the NRI. AIFs running debt-PMS strategies are within reach of any HNI who asks. Crypto ETFs are listed in jurisdictions Indians can access through LRS. The constraint that justified 60/40 has loosened.

The information landscape inverted. Before your first coffee, you have already seen Nvidia's overnight move, gold at all-time highs, a friend's US ETF screenshot, a clip from Bloomberg on Korean semiconductor margins. Your portfolio now has to make sense against everything you can see — not just against what your newspaper covers.

Calendar 2025 left a mark. Korea, Taiwan, the United States, gold, silver — all had handsome years. The Nifty stood roughly still. For an Indian-only portfolio, 2025 was a quiet, expensive lesson. For an NRI measuring in dollars, the rupee depreciation made it worse — a portfolio that earned nothing in rupees lost meaningfully in the currency the family actually lives in.

So a new conversation has started. Roughly a quarter in domestic equity, a quarter in debt, a quarter in global equity, a quarter in alternatives — gold, silver, structured products, SIFs, late-stage equity, crypto ETFs where comfortable. Twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five. The new sixty-forty.

We have been buying this shape since 2022

This is not new for us. We started moving family portfolios into the four-quarter shape five years ago. International equity, sovereign gold, target-maturity debt, structured credit, alternatives — slowly, deliberately, asset by asset, when the asset was unloved.

The clearest example is 2022. That year, US Big Tech fell roughly thirty-five percent. Chinese equity fell more. Both had been the consensus winners of the previous decade. Most investors who had held them through 2020 and 2021 sold near the lows. We bought.

Not because we were brave. Because the direction was right and the price had become reasonable. The same companies the crowd is now buying at much higher prices were available, in 2022, at a thirty-five percent discount, with the same analyst notes, the same long-term thesis, the same moats. The only difference was that the screen was red, and the headlines said the era of Big Tech was over.

That is the actual technology of compounding. It is not the asset class. It is the entry point.

The point

The four-quarter shape is right as a destination. It is dangerous as a year-end project. The temptation, after a year like 2025, is to rebuild your portfolio in a hurry. To sell domestic equity at the bottom of its move because it has frustrated you. To buy US AI near its top because Nvidia has been on every screen. To buy gold and silver because they had outlier years. To call the result diversification.

It is not diversification. It is haste, dressed in the language of strategy.

The discipline that bought US tech and Chinese equity in 2022 is the same discipline that is making us cautious about them in 2026. Direction is permanent. Price is the variable. The patient investor matches the direction to the right price, and waits when the two don't agree.

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How to read the next twelve months

Three observations on the moment we are in. None are predictions. They are the discipline of the long horizon.

Gold and silver have had outlier years. Outlier is the key word. Expecting them to repeat that performance into 2026 and 2027 is naive extrapolation. The right time to add a meaningful gold allocation was when nobody on a WhatsApp group was talking about it. That was 2022.

US Big Tech has had a multi-year run. The companies are real. The earnings are real. The moats are real. None of that means the price you can buy them at today is the right price. Even the most respected value investors of our generation, who have spent careers warning about excess, have softened their cautions on this run — which is fair, because the businesses are extraordinary. None of that changes the basic question: would your 2022 self have bought them at the multiple they trade at today? If the answer is no, go more slowly than the crowd.

Domestic equity has been quiet for eighteen months. In our market, that is a length of time historically followed by a recovery, not by another quiet eighteen months. The asset class everyone is now in a hurry to underweight may be the asset class they should be quietly adding to.

When an asset has run, slow down. When it has been forgotten, look closer. That is most of the work.

The new sixty-forty, slowly

The shape is right. 25/25/25/25 is, in rough outline, where the leading Indian portfolios are heading. The instinct that takes a family there is correct.

What separates the families who arrive there with their wealth intact from the families who arrive with a smaller version of it is patience and price. Not a different shape. The same shape, built more slowly, at fair entry points, when the asset is unloved rather than when it is on the cover of every newsletter.

We have been buying this shape since 2022. We are still buying it. We are buying the parts that are unloved today, not the parts that ran in 2025.

Move toward the new sixty-forty. As a multi-year construction project. Asset by asset. At fair prices. With reason, not regret.

That is the difference between owning the new sixty-forty and just talking about it.