20%-25% long term treasuries and 20% -25% cash have about the same duration as 50% in intermediate term bonds . they form a barbel that plays out about the same Not true. 25% LTT's with 25% cash gives you an average duration of about 11 years. The classic definition of intermediate term Treasury bo...

Backtesting: https://testfol.io/?s=aRr5LPTR6y0 25% SPY / 25% GLD / 50% SHY is essentially: Growth engine: SPY Crisis hedge / inflation shock: GLD Volatility ballast + dry powder: SHY Compared to Harry Browne’s classic PP (stocks / long bonds / gold / cash), you’ve: Replaced long bonds with short Tr...

ITT's are a better replacement for the short/long barbell - VGIT is one of the best options because it hews exactly to the optimal 5 year duration. Essentially identical returns to the classic PP without the scary drawdowns from LTT's. But it's still a really imbalanced portfolio IMHO. Gold and LTT'...

https://quantpedia.com/understanding-gold-hedge-diversifier-or-overpriced-insurance/?a=6080&ck_subscriber_id=2905772259&utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Investor%27s%20Newsletter%20-%2020253255 IMHO one of the more fascinating findings is the clear correlati...

Article making much the same points as in the video:

https://www.investing.com/analysis/chin ... -200661079

I have my 87 year old mother-in-law in a "roll your own" version of VTINX. 30% VT (Total World Stock), 30% VTIP (Short-term TIPS), 35% VGIT (Intermediate-term Treasuries), 5% treasury MM fund. Super-cheap ER, much more tax-efficient (almost all of the bonds are in her IRA), takes about 10 ...

I’m curious about that 30/70 Flip portfolio mentioned in the article. His rationale: Higher interest rates and high stock valuations imply a narrow equity premium—the additional return investors expect from stocks compared with risk-free government bonds. Investors can achieve a similar rate of ret...

TIPS & I-Bonds investors face a ‘sky is falling’ moment Can U.S. economic data be trusted? https://tipswatch.com/2025/08/10/tips-investors-face-a-sky-is-falling-moment/ Thanks for sharing this link. Enna is about as level-headed as it gets. The thing is, as someone already pointed out in the co...

Thanks ochotona!

I've been thinking about this a lot myself. It goes way beyond firing the head of the BLS, or the age-old question of whether and how much CPI data is manipulated. We currently have a government that is not just willing but eager to expunge any reference to facts that don't suit its agenda (e.g. the...

IMHO Tyler's article on TIPS goes out of its way to paint a negative picture of them based on the performance of TIPS funds in 2022, while giving only a cursory nod to both their only appropriate use (in a ladder of individual bonds held to maturity to cover specific known expenses) and the opportun...

Has anyone here made a trip to China in recent years? Apparently Ray Dalio was less struck by the economic data coming out of China and more by what he actually saw in person (work ethic, drive, manufacturing robustness, etc.). Take a look at this great interview with Thomas Friedman about his rece...

Seems like Trump was the last chance for the US to cut spending, and it’s NOT happening. So, I am really reluctant to rebalance by buying long term treasuries. Especially at my age, 69. I do remind myself that as much as I don’t trust bonds, they did save me in the 2008 crisis. I remember my broker...

A great new book that's nominally about Apple but really about a broader reshaping of the supply chain and China using Apple's almost unimaginably vast investment in China to their own advantage has come out. Here's a guest article link to the NYT review: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/books/rev...

Good editorial in the NYT today: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/china-us-trade-tariffs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IU8.zXCT.xEuo5piJPBMs&smid=url-share It's pretty one-sided but if you have NYT access there's a much longer piece by Ezra Klein in which he interviews China expert Thom...

Great piece on this over the weekend by Cullen Roche: "When you say the US government is at risk of default you are indirectly arguing that the US private sector will weaken substantially or that the US government will become so incredibly reckless with its spending that it will essentially des...

Since Harry Browne specifically recommended using the PP for "money you can't afford to lose" one could argue that it was an early version of what William Bernstein and many others call a liability-matching portfolio (LMP), except of course that it's really a probabalistic portfolio. Pre-2...

You have to register to read the full article but I found it worthwhile:

https://www.researchaffiliates.com/publ ... -gold-5000

Thanks for the thoughtful reply ochotona! Ben Carlson has a great post on the fluctuating value of the U.S. dollar that directly relates to this discussion: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2025/05/the-u-s-dollar-vs-your-portfolio/ From the looks of it both gold and international stocks are basicall...

IGOV ETF has AUM = $830 Million That's not little. It's not like IEF AUM = $34,715 million, but almost a billion dollars is certainly large enough to be a well-functioning ETF. $20 million is the extinction point. I generally don't buy anything under $100 million. Thanks for that clarification ocho...

It seems to me that Trump's tariff tantrum has exacerbated and accelerated some already-extant macro trends that taken as a whole make it highly likely that the U.S. is no longer going to be dictating the terms of world trade and cannot count on being the sole reserve currency of choice. While Harry...

Timely update from one of the smartest guys in the room (always):

https://disciplinefunds.com/2025/04/19/ ... eading-15/

I doesn't take much time to manage this... Stockcharts.com, PerfCharts option, you can pull off the 1, 3, 6, 12 month total returns for all of your tickers in a few minutes. Trade once a month. The hard part is sticking to it, second-guessing yourself, letting the short-term ruin your long-term pla...

As everyone knows, I get in and out of positions using momentum, as defined and used in the paper A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation . Let's consider the two basic fixed-income safe-haven assets... T-Bills (SGOV or BIL) and the 10-year Treasury (IEF). If we compare SGOV to any non...

Since I posted the link to the CNBC piece on Dalio, I feel obligated to also share this great post by Ben Carlson on Dalio's track record with market predictions:

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2025/0 ... al-crisis/