Reading Wiliam Bernstein's 2nd edition of The Four Pillars of Investing for the third time. Just read this! "Unlike crude oil or soybeans, you can store a reasonable amount of gold, but as we just saw, it has about zero long-term real return. The same is true of silver, which over the past few ...

dualstow wrote: ↑Wed Jan 14, 2026 6:09 pm I think I still have about 100 1oz silver coins

So a wild guess is that they are worth about $15, 20 each?

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 14, 2026 12:45 pm Silver is tantalizingly close to 100 bucks.

I have and will buy gold. Silver? No.

boglerdude wrote: ↑Mon Jan 12, 2026 8:16 pm But NOW, cuz Drump, government is corrupt and its ok to question the government and how they measure inflation

There are just too many contracts in this country based upon CPI for even President Liar and Vice President Evil of the Lowlife Administration to get away with that.

The proposed California wealth tax sounds .. disgusting. https://www.fa-mag.com/news/billionaires-are-ramping-up-their-california-exits-on-threat-of-wealth-tax-85430.html?section=356&utm_source=FA+Magazine&utm_campaign=8c4ff7f82d-FAN_AM_Wealth.com+1%2F15_011226+GTG&utm_medium=email&...

but still holds true . the base rate is always based on a guess about the future inflation . so no guarantee you will beat inflation , especially one’s own personal rate of inflation which is very different from just the cpi which is a price change index . it has no calculation in it for how many t...

In 1995 I made my only gold purchase of my life. It took ten years for it to get back to being worth what I paid for it. Did I buy at a high at the time? At this time it's worth about 7, 8 times what I bought it for. I think about an 8% compounded rate of return. It's been on my list for about a yea...

dualstow wrote: ↑Mon Jan 12, 2026 11:17 am https://portfoliocharts.com/2022/09/27/ ... #takeaways

That was written 3+ years ago and well worth being updated.

if you read tyler’s take on them they are not guaranteed to beat inflation because of how they work and in fact it was almost a coin toss as to whether they beat inflation. the base base rate is set by a guess as far as future inflation. as guesses go they only guessed right about half the time if ...

mathjak107 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 11, 2026 2:23 pm not a fan of tips for all the reasons tyler wrote about

There is nothing else available that is inflation protection guaranteed.

Use a 2x leveraged stock fund for the 'stock' third. Thirds each 2x stock, gold, cash Gold in hand, safest cash (T-Bills/short term treasury). Exposure of 66% stock, 33% gold, 33% cash, 33% borrowed (by the leveraged ETF). Reduced counter-party risk, benchmark to 67/33 stock/bond and better reward,...

I just added up about 20% in retirement accounts. There are some things I didn’t add because it’s not space , but I would like to point out that physical gold has a tax advantage in that the value can grow as it sits there with no tax to pay (and nothing to even report). Ditto for Berkshire shares....

dualstow wrote: ↑Mon Jan 05, 2026 3:46 pm Could you have Perplexity do it?

You are now officially being silly!

@Perplexity, Vinny’s post above appears to be a very long complaint about searching and/or Tolstoy’s writing style. Could you summarize it for me and let me know if there’s any other takeaway therein? To help you understand what I wrote: 1) First paragraph telling how easily I did find it using the...

It's response to me: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/i-find-this-to-be-an-overly-wo-PPIdNZ3wQSWtx4RiSkF8_w#0 Excellent question — that passage is from Leo Tolstoy, and your instincts are right. It’s characteristically dense and overextended. He uses a long allegory (the swarm of bees) to make a fai...

I found it right away. Ctrl + F I also found it right away by doing a search in this topic (upper left). Attempted to read it but found it to be an extremely wordy, tedious to read long, long, long quote that I really could not follow. Seemed like it could have made its point, whatever that was, in...

Jack Jones wrote: ↑Mon Jan 05, 2026 9:32 am HODL only makes sense as an investing strategy for income producing assets. If you never sell non-income producing assets, you never make any money.

Isn't it one of those things that literally does not mean what it means?

I’d forgotten about this thread. Not voting- doesn’t that only work if you can convince a significant majority not to? Otherwise, it’s just denying yourself the choice while everyone else takes advantage. See Tolstoy quote earlier in thread. I would if you pointed it out to me specifically. Otherwi...

I’d forgotten about this thread. Not voting- doesn’t that only work if you can convince a significant majority not to? Otherwise, it’s just denying yourself the choice while everyone else takes advantage. Not voting never made sense to me. I read one of Harry Browne's non-financial books. He recomm...

Had to follow up and this is what I got ... https://www.perplexity.ai/search/is-hodl-only-used-in-regards-t-g6uGlJkFRZOaqrd81eWAEg#0 HODL originated in the cryptocurrency community, stemming from a 2013 Bitcoin forum post where a user drunkenly misspelled "hold" during a market dip, turnin...

it’s only a problem if it goes down I can survive it going to zero. I don't know what that would mean for the world, but whatever. I for one would welcome our new insect overlords. I don't view it as a rebalancing item. When it comes to gold, I'm a hodler. (For Vinnie, that means hold on for dear l...

dualstow wrote: ↑Fri Jan 02, 2026 8:39 am Could you break down “fixed” into what is just cash and what is non-cash?

Will give more detail when I next update. Hopefully, I get it done tomorrow.

No ones going to have money to buy when AI takes the jobs. And "AI" is outsourcing, there are billions of people who want white collar jobs in the West. The data centers are only to record everything you do online There are lots of jobs that cannot be taken by either AI or by China. Most ...

You probably do, Vinny! So, if you don’t mind me asking, did new income just get spent on your store or something? Or cash savings? ALL new money went to money market funds. And, after all of that the last time I looked I'm at 54% equity and 46% fixed. I was doing a form of rebalancing by constantl...

O0 Yeah, it seems like a lot of female cats don’t like their bellies touched. I had a neighbor’s cat always visiting me by climbing over the shared garden wall, rubbing my ankles. But she would freak out if I touched her belly. She DEFINITELY wants her belly rubbed. Just don't know what areas I ven...