Hence my point: "if you were a buyer of stocks during that period (rather than selling in a panic), then you made out like a bandit."

Ignore drawdowns to your benefit, or ignore them at your perile. After all, it's your money.

People obsess over max drawdowns WAY too much. Unless you're in retirement (or close to it) you should ignore drawdowns entirely. In fact, you should greedily view them as ideal buying opportunities. The market only took 3 years to completely recover from the Great Recession, and that was after a dr...

I have almost entirely exited US equities. I bought CWI ETF of global stocks excluding US. VEU is another choice. This was the May 31 Dual Momentum signal. It feels strange. Now the financial news is oddly not relevant. I'm dependent on Mario Draghi, PBoC, BOJ more than Yellen. It's fun to look at ...

I only keep 60% of my HSA portfolio in the HBPP. I divide up the other 40% by putting 10% each into:

• Small Cap Value

• US REIT

• Foreign Developed Markets

• Diversified Emerging Markets

Working nicely for me so far.

It's not the drones we need to fear... it's the nanobots:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(novel)

The other change is the elimination of the so-called "Stretch IRA":
https://www.kiplinger.com/article/retir ... heirs.html

Whitney "The Prophet" Tilson is making the case for TSLA dropping to $100 by year's end:

https://empirefinancialresearch.com/art ... or-tesla-2

My wife's HSA is at TDAmeritrade as well so here are the changes I made (I hate paying commissions if I can avoid them): Gold = IAU (unchanged, and not commission free, but no commission-free options exist). Long-term Treasuries = SPTL Stocks = SPTM Cash = None (I don't believe in holding cash until...

Another option: Sell an equal amount of whatever has gone down (I'm guessing gold?) to offset the gain in stocks. The loss on gold will offset the gain on stocks. Then, wait 31 days (to avoid the wash sale rule) and repurchase gold (or whatever you need to get back in balance). Consult a tax prepare...

Assuming you don't suffer from a chronic health condition, the human body does not need supplements in pill form if you eat a healthy, varied diet. That said, I take these supplements: Multi-vitamin - Doctor recommended as a "safety net" just in case I'm missing anything in my vegetarian d...

The evidence in support of flossing is weak at best, and probably non-existent: Weak, unreliable evidence suggests flossing plus toothbrushing may be associated with a small reduction in plaque http://www.nature.com/ebd/journal/v13/n1/abs/6400835a.html The Medical Benefit of Daily Flossing Called In...

1) If you can't afford to pay cash for the home, you can't afford it. So... no one should ever finance anything?  Not even a college education?  That's not very realistic now, is it?  Top-rated financial advisor Ric Edelman says there are 11 Great Reasons to Carry a Big, Long Mortgage .  Personally...

+1 Yup buy on nice pull backs that said. A few more down days I'll start buying.  That's why don't even watch CNBC they'll talk PE. China down. Etc.  then at some point You'll be. In panic. Also correct me if I am wrong.  Boggle heads don't use TLT.  they rather use diversified bond fund.  I think ...

Why? If anything, now seems like the time to be buying stocks, not selling them. Stocks are still insanely overvalued. But they are less overvalued than they were when everyone thought buying them was a good idea. The best time to buy stocks is when everyone hates the stock market the most, but it'...

FWIW, our (my wife and I) combined return for 2015 was -4.0%.  And that's for a combined portfolio with this overall asset allocation (only part of which is dedicated to a PP):
3% Commodities
3% Int'l Bonds
4% Cash
6% REITs
9% Gold
10% US Bonds
25% Int'l Stocks
40% US Stocks

Pointedstick wrote:

MachineGhost wrote: LOL!  I think you're dreaming.  Blacks are always going to be eternally grateful to the Democratic torchbearers for getting them their civil rights.

But, it would be really cool if it ever happened.

How ironic it is that it took a Republican (Lincoln) to free the slaves. 

3. You have forgotten to divide by four in your "worse" figures for 10/14.  You can't just add the percentages together without factoring in that each asset only makes up 25% of the portfolio.  So your worse numbers are actually all on the order of –0.8%; that is, they are better!  And th...

Not only that, for the moment it's beating a 100% total stock market index portfolio and a conservative 55% bond Boglehead portfolio. All assets but stocks are once again positive YTD. Could turn around tomorrow, but it's at least a good reminder of how tough a year this has been for investments. U...

Where the Gospels Came From: Have you ever wondered where the gospels came from? Here’s your answer, compiled from Bart Ehrman (for the telephone game) and too many atheist Internet sources to list. (Yes, this is satire.) https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/10/where-the-gospels-came-from/?...

I just stumbled across this study independently and was glad to see it had already been discussed here (you PPers are always right on top of things!)  I thought I'd share a link to the Executive Summary, as well as a quote from the report that pretty much sums up their findings: http://health.gov/di...

Good point... possibly.  I'll have to add inflation to my table and see how the nominal returns are over time. 

what must happen to you PERMANENT PORTFOLIO or to the world that makes you quit from having a PP ? 3-4 years falling? The PP has never had 2 back-to-back years of negative returns.  So put 3 of them together and I would be very, very concerned.  Of course, that would also mean that there were likel...

I just happen to have some charts of my own I created a while back.  The first is the source data, and the rest are graphs based off of that data.  That last one concerns me, as the 43-year Total Return trend line is clearly sloping downward.  Enjoy. http://s19.postimg.org/vcmixw5f7/PPAnnual_Chart.p...

Pardon the intrusion, but I didn't have time to read all 17 pages of posts in this thread.  I dusted off my PP historical performance spreadsheet and wanted to share some food for thought.  (Note:  the numbers below assume you bought a PP on 1/1 of each year and held it without rebalancing until 1/1...