Three rules. Reading rebalance cadence as a cost line, not a feature on the brochure.
The fee column is small and visible. The cadence column is invisible and big. Latency is the gap between rebalance dates, the window in which drift overrides the screen you signed up for. Three checks before you sign the cheque on a basket that says "we rebalance for you".
01
Mean reversion fires inside the gap, not at the rebalance date.
A 63 day window holds a runner all the way to a 2.6x overweight and a laggard all the way to half before any trim. A 10 day window does not let either travel that far. Ask the cadence on every basket you own. Then ask what the median top-weight drift looks like between rebalances. A brochure that quotes annualised return without quoting cadence is one column short of an honest comparison.
02
Drift is a silent overweight, not a free upside.
The quarterly book sits in a runner at 8.6 pct because the basket has not been rebalanced for two months. That is not a conviction call. It is the absence of one. If you wanted that single name at 8.6 pct you would have picked it directly. The cadence picked it for you by not selling it. The day the runner reverts, the position you did not size is the position that bites.
03
Cadence is a cost line, not a feature on the brochure.
3.6 pp of compounding and 2.6 pp of drawdown handed back over five years on the same universe is not noise. It is the price of letting the gap run. Treat rebalance frequency the same way you treat TER. Ask it. Compare it. Decide what cadence your holding period actually deserves. If you are happy holding the basket for a decade, quarterly may be enough. If the screen you bought matters, the cadence has to match the screen.
Closer
Quarterly reads as cheaper because the fee column is small. The line item nobody reads is latency. The discipline is the alpha. The cadence is the price of admission.