Key Morningstar Metrics for DFA Global 60Eq-40Fi Portfolio
- : GoldMorningstar Medalist Rating
- : Above AverageProcess Pillar
- : Above AveragePeople Pillar
- : HighParent Pillar
The DFA Global Portfolios apply an academic approach that targets factor premiums. Thoughtful execution brings theory to reality in an efficient manner.
The suite of five target risk options ranges from 40% to 80% equities comprised DFA’s own equity and fixed-income funds. Management is a collaborative approach, with three teams (research, portfolio management, and trading) handling separate aspects of this series. The sole named manager, Jed Fogdall, plays a minor part here, and day-to-day oversight falls to portfolio manager Ashish Bhagwanjee.
The series does not use tactical asset allocation. It instead targets academically backed risk premiums in stocks and bonds. As such, the underlying equity funds tilt toward cheap, profitable, and small-capitalization stocks, which DFA thinks will add value over time. The bond component is flexible by design, increasing credit quality when spreads tighten to reduce downside risk and changing duration based on the shape of the yield curve. The latter resulted in higher allocation to cashlike securities in 2023 and 2024 when short-term rates were higher than long-term rates in multiple countries.
Potential improvements, either through the addition of identified risk premiums or changes to trading, go through a multistep evaluation process. A well-supported research group continuously scrutinizes new angles to portfolio management and factor-based investing, which makes for an academic-based approach befitting the firm’s history. These proposals have historically been incremental tweaks to the trading process rather than broad changes to the core philosophy.
Academic heavyweights and DFA executives sit on committees that oversee portfolio construction. Nobel Laureates Robert C. Merton and Eugene Fama join Kenneth French to provide strong and steady oversight of research efforts on the investment research committee. Portfolio manager named on this strategy, Fogdall, and DFA founder David Booth sit on the firm’s investment committee, which discusses the feasibility of proposed process tweaks.
The series has added value over the long run, but the factors it perpetually targets can weigh on results at times. The size tilt has meant that the strategy tends to overweight materials stocks, which helped each risk option post a top-quartile return in its respective category over the year ending January 2026. Conversely, only three of the five risk options produced a top-quartile three-year return, owing mainly to an underweighting in mega-cap technology.
DFA Global 60Eq-40Fi Portfolio: Performance Highlights
The series has had long-term success, but it has also been susceptible to struggles when the risk premiums it targets perform poorly.
Across the series, the F shares outpaced the category median over the 10 years ended January 2026. Four of the five risk options in the series posted top-quartile results over the same period in their respective categories; the DFA Global 50EQ-50FI Portfolio was the sole exception, reflecting its more conservative equity mix within the global-neutral balanced category cohort.
Desired factor exposures, and the intentional bias to Canadian stocks, which are relatively smaller and the team views as attractively priced, have helped in the past five years. All five risk options produced a top-quartile return in their respective categories from February 2021 through January 2026, boosted by a strong 2022, where energy stocks shone and 2025, where gold miners drove returns. The slightly higher weight toward commodity sectors also hurt in 2015 and 2018, with each risk option failing to beat category peers in those calendar years.
Indeed, performance has largely aligned with expectations. Between 2021 and 2022, when small caps and value led, the DFA Global 60EQ-40FI Portfolio F shares returned 2.3% annualized versus a 1.5% loss for the Morningstar Canada Global Neutral Target Allocation Index. In the subsequent two years through 2024, when mega-cap technology led, the fund trailed that index by 0.8 percentage points. Persistent tilts toward smaller, cheaper companies can influence performance over such short periods.
