I have to give crypto this: when it has a good quarter, it really has a good quarter. A new report from Crypto Briefing lays it out plainly, and it matches what I've been watching in my own messy little portfolio: over the past three months, crypto outperformed traditional assets. Stocks, bonds, gold, the whole boring crew I usually tell you to load up on.

And no, I'm not about to pivot this column into "mortgage the house and buy memecoins." Stay with me.

The numbers are the numbers, though. Bitcoin and the broader crypto market posted gains that left the S&P 500 in the dust over that window, and gold, which had a monster run earlier this year, cooled off enough to trail as well. Bonds did what bonds have been doing lately, which is not much. When I flagged the dot-com-style valuation signals a few weeks back, I mentioned that money sloshing between asset classes is one of the things making this market feel top-heavy. Crypto absorbing that much inflow is part of the same story. Cash looking for returns doesn't care where it lands.

Transparency moment, since I promised I'd always give it to you straight: my crypto allocation is small, on purpose, around 5% of my total portfolio. It's up over these three months, which feels nice, and it was down badly at other points, which felt terrible. Anyone who shows you only the good quarter is selling something.

Warren and I actually argued about this exact report over coffee. His take: three months is noise, not signal, and chasing a quarter's winner is how people end up buying high. My take: he's right, and also, pretending crypto doesn't exist is how you end up financially illiterate in one whole corner of the modern world. We landed, as usual, on "both probably right." I keep my automated index fund buys running every payday, my crypto slice stays at 5%, and I rebalance when the slice gets too fat. And if crypto keeps this pace, it will get fat.

That last part matters more than people think. Rebalancing is the boring mechanic that turns a hot streak into an actual win. If your crypto slice grows from 5% to 10% and you sell back down to 5%, you've locked in gains without having to predict anything. No timing, no vibes, no chart staring at midnight. Just a rule and a calendar reminder.

What I'd warn against is the thing that always happens next. Crypto outperforms for a quarter, the headlines pile up, and suddenly people who've never opened an exchange account are buying whatever coin their coworker mentioned. I wrote about the Shiba Inu $1 fantasy for exactly this reason: the math on most of these tokens is brutal and most buyers find out too late. The assets that led this quarter's report are mostly the big ones, Bitcoin chief among them, not the lottery tickets.

So what do you actually do with this? If you already own some crypto, this is a rebalancing reminder, not a victory lap. If you don't, this isn't a signal to pile in after the good news is already priced in, the same logic that keeps me from buying Nvidia at all-time highs near $6 trillion. And if you're sitting on zero investments of any kind, a three-month performance chart is not your problem. Your problem is starting, and an index fund on autopilot still beats agonizing over asset class rankings you can't control.

Three months from now the leaderboard might flip and gold or stocks might be the headline. I'll still be buying my funds every payday either way, and I'll still tell you exactly how my crypto slice is doing, good quarter or bad. That's the arrangement.