Here is a sentence that should not be possible. The fund went up. The people who owned the fund went down.
Jason Zweig laid out the arithmetic in Saturday’s Journal, using the first batch of bitcoin ETFs — funds that trade like stocks. Almost a dozen launched on the same day in January 2024.
Bitcoin itself went from about $46,000 on launch day to about $58,700 by June 30. The funds rode along. Higher is higher.
So the owners made money, right? They did not. As a group, they added cash after the good stretches and pulled it out after the bad ones.
Jeffrey Ptak, a Morningstar analyst, put numbers on the damage. Investors in those original funds lost an average of 5.8% a year. They trailed the very funds they owned by 14.30 points a year.
And the timing was as bad as it sounds. They pulled $6 billion out from November 2025 through May, while bitcoin’s price collapsed more than 30%. Selling the bottom, right on schedule.
Not About Bitcoin
This is the part worth sitting with. Zweig has been writing about this behavior gap since long before bitcoin existed.
And it is not just amateurs. Financial advisers and big institutions underperform their own investments too. This is a human reflex, not a knowledge problem.
Buying after a fund goes up feels like validation. Selling after it goes down feels like safety. Finance professor Alex Edmans, quoted in the Journal: “Investors credit skill for their gains, but blame their losses on bad luck.”
Monday’s paper carried the same mistake with more zeroes. Clearwater Analytics studied private portfolios of $30 million or more. After years of blockbuster stock returns, those households did not lock in gains by shifting to bonds.
Their stock share simply swelled, from 44.9% of holdings three years ago to 47.4% as of June 30. Clearwater’s Matthew Vegari put it plainly: there really has not been much rebalancing at all.
Nobody in that study lost 14.30 points a year. But nobody chose 47.4% either. It just happened to them.
The Rule That Works
Zweig’s prescription is old-fashioned and cheap. Allocate, don’t speculate. Pick a percentage and stick to it.
His examples were small on purpose. Think low-volatility stocks are underappreciated? Put 5% there. Really believe bitcoin will transform finance? Put 1% in it.
Then the rule does the work. When the bet goes cold and shrinks below your target, buy back up to it. When it runs hot, trim back down to it.
Do the trading inside your retirement account, where it will not trigger tax bills. And when the urge to gamble strikes, Zweig says, use a “mad money” account kept separate from the rest.
Two Questions
You do not need an opinion on bitcoin to use any of this. A portfolio needs a target percentage and a rule for what happens when it drifts.
Without the rule, the market picks your allocation for you. It always picks the thing that just went up.
This is exactly how the Capital Wealth Growth Portfolio is run: targets and rules, not feelings. The rule is boring on purpose; boring is what closes the gap.
So pull out your latest statement and ask two questions. What is my target? How far from it am I today? If either answer takes longer than a minute, bring it to a review.