Suppose you have an asset allocation strategy that is 25% US stocks, 25% international stocks, 25% real estate (REITs), 25% commodities (I'm not suggesting you

Suppose you have an asset allocation strategy that is 25% US stocks, 25% international stocks, 25% real estate (REITs), 25% commodities (I'm not suggesting you do this, but this was the allocation in Roger Gibson's famous multi-asset allocation strategy paper - google it). To implement this you would want to: 1. Choose 4 different funds to represent each of those classes (e.g. an S&P 500 index fund, an MSCI EAFE fund, etc.). You want to be sure to reinvest dividends. 2. On a specific time period (i.e. once a quarter) you rebalance your portfolio - if anything has gone above 25%, you sell it so that you can buy anything that has fallen below 25%. Many investment platforms let you essentially do this automatically these days.