Interesting that the portfolio tracked RSP more closely than SPY. That Q4 giveback is brutal but it actually tells you something useful about your holdings. When equal-weight underperforms cap-weight by that much, it usually means the mega caps (particularly the Mag7) were doing all the heavy lifting while breadth was weaker. The fact that you held up through Sept and then gave backsome of those gains in Q4 suggests you might have been positioned more in quality mid-caps or diversified names rather than being overweight the handful of names that drove SPY's outperformance. Given how concentrated SPY has become, being inline with RSP isn't necessarily a bad benchmark, especially if you're focused on moats and reinvestment runways like you mentioned.
Interesting that the portfolio tracked RSP more closely than SPY. That Q4 giveback is brutal but it actually tells you something useful about your holdings. When equal-weight underperforms cap-weight by that much, it usually means the mega caps (particularly the Mag7) were doing all the heavy lifting while breadth was weaker. The fact that you held up through Sept and then gave backsome of those gains in Q4 suggests you might have been positioned more in quality mid-caps or diversified names rather than being overweight the handful of names that drove SPY's outperformance. Given how concentrated SPY has become, being inline with RSP isn't necessarily a bad benchmark, especially if you're focused on moats and reinvestment runways like you mentioned.
Exactly—that’s why I see RSP as the more appropriate benchmark. Over a longer time horizon, its performance also tends to track SPY closely.