Yes, Gold trackers are usually not hedged. The performance in your home currency should be the same whether you buy a euro or dollar denominated tracker

Irish-domiciled ETFs that expose you to US assets are certainly good enough. You don't need those ETF's to be domiciled in the US. Is direct USD exposure via ETFs worth it 🤔, or is the embedded USD exposure in global UCITS ETFs already enough for a long-term European investor? You already get quite ...

Instead of having to setup and maintain two separate PPs, you could simplify and construct a more globally diversified PP. For example: 25% Global stocks (unhedged, example ETF: VWRL/VWCE) 25% Gold 50% Intermediate-term global government bonds (hedged to the euro, example ETF's: VGGF, DBZB) Or, for ...

It looks like the fed wont let stocks drop more than 30%. A 1% rate change in EDV will move it 30%. You can balance the volatility, if they sell 100 year bonds you could hold less of them. Its possible that eventually the 30 year will just swing from 1% to -1% like I suppose happens in Japan/german...

I assume he means something like iShares ICBI? Not sure how though as he also states: 'Obviously you wouldn’t buy government bonds under any condition'.

Dutch/German 30y treasury yield is negative, inflation here is currently 1.6%, yeah they look pretty unattractive to me...

The PP and Gold have performed above any of my expectations. I stopped tracking Golds performance after loss harvesting to offset gains in other assets and switching between GLD/IAU but according to VG I now have a 92% gain LTD on my holdings ;D It feels great (and weird!) to have a portfolio that'...

It's pretty easy to make behavioral mistakes when you start to deviate from the total market. It seems clear that a lot of people just added SCV to their portfolio because of backtesting. To switch from SCV to LCG right when LCG is outperforming seems like pure performance chasing to me. You can alw...

I'm mostly lurking this board as there are usually some interesting threads about the PP. Of course I noticed the political threads lately and I've been pretty interested in them. As a Dutch citizen this board gives me a different perspective of what's going on in the US. What struck me is how compl...

Like the idea. 30% gold might be a bit too much for most people, 25% seems to be a kind of upper limit. How about 40/40 with 20% gold, like the golden butterfly. Msci world, bonds in your own currency, plus some gold should make a pretty solid portfolio. Easy to implement in most countries. And yeah...

It's been so long since people were suggesting to actively over-weight tech stocks. The problem with tech is: everybody is expecting tech stocks to do very well. So in order to get a better return than the general market, tech has to do even better than expected. If you really want large tech/growth...

“ I would argue that what we think of as 'odds' are really just being calculated from a relatively short time frame of late twentieth century technological development and prosperity. Taken from a longer term viewpoint human history is much more fraught with upheavel. The later half of the twentiet...

“ I would argue that what we think of as 'odds' are really just being calculated from a relatively short time frame of late twentieth century technological development and prosperity. Taken from a longer term viewpoint human history is much more fraught with upheavel. The later half of the twentiet...

I recently reread Deep Risk, and I think it offered compelling arguments against the 4x25 split of the PP. It also opened my eyes to the possibility that the PP might have too much deflation protection by having three assets that can do really well during deflation: bonds, cash and gold. I'm not mak...

Lately I've been thinking about this issue as well. The Dutch 30Y treasury rate sits at zero and Germany has negative long term rates. The yield of most saving accounts is also around 0%. My current allocation to LT bonds are individual Dutch LT's and I was thinking of maybe switching to a euro hedg...

Oh man, my hands are itching to 'optimize' that chart by adding some stocks and/or bonds
Not doing it!

Interesting, I like the simplicity! What is the reason you didn't include a small stock allocation at all? Can a portfolio like this act as a sort of counterweight/inverse correlation to your career? I can imagine that for a disaster portfolio you'd want to own some stocks as it's very likely to be ...

There has been some discussion about treasury duration for the Desert Portfolio, but I think it the duration was 5 years instead of 10. That would reduce the outperformance somewhat.

A 3% yield might still look appealing, but what about long-term yields <1%, like Germany? When are yields too low? 30year German bonds are yielding 0.8% currently, that’s comparable with a 2-year CD with basically zero risk. The volatility of yield changes at such a low starting point will be explos...

Thanks for your post Kevin K. Because of concern about long term bonds, I adjusted my portfolio by lowering duration. Currently you gain very little by holding on to long-term bonds while the potential downside risk is incredible. It's probably even worse for a Eurozone PP, like mine. Maybe rates wi...

When you start a PP you know that gold can easily go down for 10-20 years. As long as one or more other assets make up for it. PP has performed exactly as expected. It's not a portfolio to make money, it's for protecting your money. There was a lot of talk about 'solid 3-5% real returns', but I don'...

Good point about the possible need for simplicity when for some reason you cannot do that yourself anymore. Setting up and maintaining the PP seems very easy to me, but I know most people around me have have zero experience or interest in maintaining such a portfolio. A one-fund solution like Welles...

Hi Jeffreyalan, what is your goal with your Variable Portfolio? Are you planning to find an allocation and stick with it?

I think it would help if you add the names of the ETF's.

Some nice fee reductions for 4 Irish ishares etf's. The fee reduction from 0.33% to 0.12% of the iShares MSCI EMU etf is particularly interesting for Eurozone investors! http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/news/blackrock-cuts-charges-on-multi-billion-etf-range/a1126023?ref=wealth_manager_all_storie...

That's a great allocation!
Using only two funds is a nice simplified way of implementing the PP, and it's still widely diversified. The international exposure and the silver might help or not, but it likely won't make a huge difference either way.

Are you going to keep some cash on the side as well?