Just my 2 cents worth... and I hope to contribute more numbers in the future.

A lot of bright people (thousands actually - considering all the hedge funds out there), have poured countless hours into this pursuit. Go into this knowing that it's not easy! You are competing with people who are paid (high) full-time salaries to find just such things.

If you take a step back and assume that you want to de-risk your portfolio, and if you assume a relatively high level of market efficiency, then what you would ultimately expect to make is the risk-free return. If you hedged all risk away.

In reality, depending on how fancy you get, you are more likely to make the risk-free rate minus some rather significant expenses. For example, people try using ETF's like TAIL to hedge (if you want to use an ETF), with some type of market timing overlay (plenty of discussion in past months/years around market timing / allocation strategies).

My personal experience with this stuff - moving a higher allocation to cash (tbills) when I either got sell signals, or felt like the market was just really stretched, was almost always more effective than some of the other more exotic things I tried. :-(

And sadly, if I added everything up, I could have likely just sat in SPY or BRK (long-term buy and hold), and been better off...

Just one person's observations... Genuinely wish I had a better answer!

Lee