The Barbell Strategy
Park most of your money in boring safety, blow a sliver on lottery tickets, and never touch the middle.
Grounded in the research on the barbell strategy
Wait, what's a barbell got to do with money?
Picture an actual barbell: heavy plates on both ends, nothing in the middle. Nassim Taleb's idea, from his 2012 book Antifragile, is to load your money the same way. One end is brutally safe. The other is wildly speculative. The fragile, mediocre middle gets nothing. You're not balancing risk, you're splitting it into two extremes on purpose.
So how do I actually split it?
Taleb's go-to number: roughly 85-90% in the safest thing you can find, like short-term Treasuries or cash. The other 10-15% goes into aggressive, high-payoff bets where the worst case is you lose that slice and walk away. The safe end means a crash can't ruin you. The risky end means a boom can make you. You cap the downside at 10-15% and leave the upside open.