Name: The 5-Minute Hedge Fund
Author: Sean Ryan

Question 1

What is The 5-Minute Hedge Fund?

Accepted Answer

The 5-Minute Hedge Fund is a free book by Sean Ryan, founder of Predicting Alpha. It teaches the North Star Portfolio: a rules-based portfolio designed to beat the market in under five minutes of work per week, and includes the exact portfolio and the research behind it.

Question 2

What is the North Star Portfolio?

Accepted Answer

A systematic portfolio built from five ETFs — SPY (equities), TLT (bonds), GLD (gold), DBC (commodities), and FXE (currency) — plus VXX, a volatility ETN. Simple rules tell you when each exposure should be on, off, reduced, or hedged. In backtested research from 2011 to 2025 it produced an 18.4% annualized return with a 1.22 Sharpe ratio, was profitable in 13 of 15 years, and beat the S&P 500 in 9 of 15. Backtested results are not live trading results.

Question 3

Is the book actually free?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Enter your name and email and the full book is sent to your inbox as a PDF — six chapters plus the research appendix, including the exact portfolio and the rules to run it.

Question 4

What is inside the book?

Accepted Answer

Six short chapters plus a research appendix — readable in one sitting: The North Star — define where you are actually trying to get to before you trade The machine — what a portfolio needs to become a wealth-compounding machine The North Star machine — the ETF foundation and the volatility engine The terrain — how the portfolio behaves across market regimes How to run the North Star portfolio — the five-minute weekly workflow Decades not days — why the game is won over decades

Question 5

How much time does the portfolio take to run?

Accepted Answer

Less than five minutes per week. You get notified when action is required, place the trades in your own brokerage, and get back to your life. There are no charts to watch and no news to follow.

Question 6

Do I need to hand my money over or be an accredited investor?

Accepted Answer

No. You keep full control of your capital in your own brokerage account. Predicting Alpha provides the research, signals, and sizing; you place the trades yourself.

The 5-Minute
Hedge Fund

Questions about the book

Read it in one sitting.Run it for decades.

The 5-MinuteHedge Fund