Once again it is all about oil, or should I say Natural Gas pipelines that go through Ukraine to the rest of Europe. Quite a few American chicken-hawks on here trying to take on Russia.  I'm 1000% sure that if the US had only 1 warm water port for their Navy they would do anything and everything to ...

The bank I deal with has a set of index mutual funds with very low MER.  They pretty much track the same as the ETFs I plan to buy, so I figure I will deposit money into those until it's worthwhile to pay the brokerage fee to buy the equivalent ETF. This of course depends on how big your contributio...

Market timing is for the VP. If you feel the desire to do this, why not set up a PP in your VP and try it there? Then in a year or two you see see what difference in performance, if any, was actually observed. I suspect the difference will be minuscule at best. Yeah, I hear ya.  I guess I should of...

...do you use any form of market timing?  I know, I know, the Permanent Portfolio frowns  >:(  on market timing, but I am talking about very very very short term timing.  E.g.  buying today vs. waiting a few days, or weeks. Do anyone one use short-term technicals? Does anyone avoid May-October timef...

Gosso wrote: You could do the following:

50% Canadian Bonds
25% Gold
12.5% Canadian Stocks
12.5% US/EAFE stocks (look at XWD)

Sounds good.  Thanks for you help and insights.

p.s.   EAFE = Australia France Israel Norway Switzerland Austria Germany Italy Portugal United Kingdom Belgium Greece Japan Singapore Denmark Hong Kong Netherlands Spain Finland Ireland New Zealand Sweden There are a lot of countries in that list that I would also characterize as experiencing a lon...

Why EAFE? I'm not married to the idea, but... I read somewhere that it has similar performance to US stocks. My main reason is that I think the US is in a longterm decline. At some point the debt is going to catch up to the US and they are going to have to devalue their dollar.  I guess I take some ...

Firstly I am in Canada, so the usual Permanent Portfolio logic doesn't necessarily translate.... bear with me... Okay, I KNOW it is 1 of the 4 main legs of the Permanent Portfolio, but my poor Spock brain is having a lot of difficulty with putting 25 % into Long Canadian Bonds.  Just last week I rea...

Everything I have read points to a recession already underway.  Why else would Staples (and some other chain who's name I forget) close 100s of stores?  Why would McDonald's sales be down by a figure not seen in over 10 years?  If you believe shadowstats.com, the unemployment rate is really above 20...

Thanks. I figured it out. For those that use google docs, you can import this Canadian Federal Bond quote table using this formula =ImportHtml("http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/Page/document/v5/data/bonds?order=d&sort=MATURITY&type=fedgov&page=1", "table",1) It ap...

I have spreadsheets that can pull stock quotes from MSN, and Yahoo, but I haven't been able to find a symbol (or a way) to get quotes on Canadian Federal Long bonds.  Has anyone here had success with doing this?

A while back I came across this Canadian version of the Permanent Portfolio from an advisor at National Bank: http://preserveyourwealth.ca/permanent_portfolio.php 1. 20% INTERNATIONAL Stocks – during times of economic growth, stocks lead the way in terms of greater returns. 2. 25% Short Term Bonds –...

I think Harry Browne's "sticking to your home country's stock market" might be a little too simple.  In Canada for instance, our stock market is resource heavy and something like 10% of the TSX60 are gold miners (too much overlap with the 25% gold portion). One flavor of PP suggests to put...

barrett wrote: I have my 25% stock allocation set up with Fidelity's S&P 500 Fund (Spartan Deluxe Supreme, or something like that).

Sounds like a mighty tasty pizza... 

So, in summary, a "Canadian Permanent Portfolio" could look something like this: Cash: 25% TD Canadian T-Bill Fund (MER of 0.37%) held in a TD Waterhouse brokerage account. Long Term Bonds: 25% BMO Long Federal Bonds Index ETF (MER 0.20%) through a questrade brokerage account. Stock: 25% ...

I am in the same boat.  I'm tempted to buy the stock portion in November.  There is some evidence supporting "Sell in May and go away"

Costs are important; MNT = 35 basis points IGT = 25 basis points (my choice) At one point I ran across this article about IGT (IAU in the US), and I simply don't trust IGT. http://www.zerohedge.com/article/has-ishares-gold-etf-iau-been-covertly-depleted-90-its-physical-holdings-banks-jpm-and-goldm ...

It's been ~4-5 years since I've been convinced I'd have a better entry point into the stock market and had to get on the gold train before it left the station. So look what that strategy has done for me.  Way high in gold and cash and little of anything else, and have missed out on a huge market ra...

mgtow, Which ETFs/funds were you considering for your Canadian portfolio? a fellow Canuck  :) For real return bonds I will probably go with BMO's  http://www.etfs.bmo.com/bmo-etfs/performance?fundId=80005    (cheaper than iShare's) For gold I  have always used the Royal Canadian Mint's ETR...

Gosso, Thank you so much for your response.  Very informative!  This puts my mind more at ease.  Now my only remaining question is entry point.  I have a really good knack at buying stuff that then falls in value soon after  (Nortel, XBB, Barrick,  Gold when it was $1850) I am currently 90% cash, 10...

http://www.preserveyourwealth.ca/permanent_portfolio.php In case the link doesn't work, he uses the following asset mix: 20% gold ETF 25% real return bonds ETF 25% short term bonds ETF 20% international stock ETF  - I assume UN-hedged. 10% Corporate Preferred Share Index ETF I recall reading somewh...

Wow, I knew gold did well, but I didn't know it caused a rebalance 3 times in a row!

I'm convinced they are a guaranteed long term loss (at least in real terms) and therefore I haven't and won't buy them until rates are much higher and everyone is certain the US is going to default. This quote really grabbed me.  Why would you buy US Treasury bonds if you knew the US was going to d...

Hi,   "First time caller, long time listener...."   I like the idea of rebalancing basically forcing you to buy low and sell high.  Using bonds as an example:  If it hits the 35% band, would one get any extra benefit from selling off the excess gain BUT rebalance it so that the bond alloca...