Want to earn much of the upside of the stock market without any risk? 

Sounds impossible, but it isn’t, and we’re not talking about an equity-indexed annuity (rebranded as a fixed indexed annuity). It’s actually quite simple and can be done with ultra-low fees and high tax-efficiency. Here are two ways, and both involve buying a single Treasury Bond and investing in a stock index fund. Let’s take a $100,000 portfolio as an example, and a long investment horizon of 20 years. 

Away we go.

Nominal Risk-Free Return 

We start with a zero-coupon Treasury bond, which is hopefully risk-free. It pays no coupon income, and the entire return comes at maturity. The current yield of a 20-year, zero-coupon bond as of Dec. 31,…