Although I don't believe in active management, I do think that SOME people could benefit from having a financial advisor just to keep them from doing something stupid... like trying to time the markets. A long time ago I read something about the difference between investment returns and actual inves...

MT, Your anecdote reminded me that Bill Clinton once said that Hillary is the most honest person he knows.  Does that say more about Bill or Hillary?  ;-) So, although I'm sure Craig's PP returns are solid, without knowing who his accountant and what his client portfolio looks like... it's hard to t...

I think it's a pity that we've made our lives so complex and confusing by creating all sorts of different retirement, education, health savings plans/accounts.  Sure, I'm taking advantage of them, but regret all of the time I've killed figuring out what works for my particular situation.  In the end...

How does one go about trading on an anticipated rise in volatility (VIX)?  I've dabbled with VIXY a bit, but it looks like contango really eats that up over more than a few weeks/months.  Basically, I'd like to bet (yes, I'm gambling here) that VIX will be significantly higher at some point in the n...

Not sure it will make you feel better, but it bothers me too when my PP gets smaller.

Really?  You consider it a "consumption item"?  What other "consumption items" not only retain their value, but keep pace with inflation, and can be financed for 30 years at 4% fixed? I would completely agree that it doesn't make sense to buy a house with cash and let it sit vaca...

It's been a while, but I've done my fair share of rehabbing houses and lending on manufactured homes (not "hard money", but similar risk profile) over the years and it can be very profitable.  Wonk gave a nice overview of hard money. Here are a few things to consider before making such a l...

This post and the one Clive made above it make sense to me. In a low interest rate environment, where is the downside?  Are there other factors in the decay besides borrowing costs for leverage? Don't underestimate the power of tracking error to ruin you.  Check out this chart: http://img833.images...

When I was studying for the first CFA exam there were a lot of ethics-related topics covered.  I kept reading the material and thinking to myself "Oh, wow, it would be really cool if they actually did that." Cool?  You want cool?  Ok, how cool would it be if the US House of Representative...

Even if you want to manage others' money using the PP, you'd need to know it inside and out and articulate how and why it performs the way it does in a variety of economic circumstances.  Unfortunately, I'm still far from that point in my knowledge of finance and economics.  Simply telling your cli...

In my work I get to see lots of 401(k) plan data for many different employers and the number of account balances that would actually fund a decent retirement (which for most people would be an account balance of $500,000-$1,000,000 at a minimum) is TINY .  MT, This is good stuff, always learn from ...

All of the PP asset classes have returns with low correlations to one another. I've been looking at PP asset correlations and it's surprised me how much they can and do change over time.  For example, over the past ~7 years TLT and GLD have a 0.86 correlation (approximately, don't have the data in ...

I've had similar thoughts lately, but with bonds vs. gold, and have traded on them fairly profitably.  Sure, I realize rates can go lower (TLT go higher), but is that the most likely scenario in the long run (10+ years)?  So far I've been pretty lucky and bumped my overall PP return by about 1% this...

Clive - thanks so much for your contributions here, they are very thought provoking!

Completely understand your questioning of the 200 MA, I'm right there with ya.  However, I'm equally (if not more so) intrigued by: 1.  Why 25/25/25/25?  Haven't others (Clive, I think) shown that better returns with slightly more volatility can be had by reducing cash and increasing equities?  And ...

Again, thanks to everyone for their thoughts on this.  Unlike gold and stocks, there are real limits to how high bond prices can go and we are relatively close to those limits at current yields.  As MT suggested, clearly there will be trading opportunities based on price/interest rate fluctuations, ...

Oh, I'm well aware of the rules, just haven't internalized them at this point.  And I do believe they are good rules and appreciate the reminder, thank you.   The problem is my little nest egg was made very actively by breaking some rules (bought bad paper others wouldn't touch, fixed it, sold it un...

I wonder what people have invested in before if this sort of movement would cause them to panic? The volatility of the PP is far less than the 100% stock allocation plus some speculative LEAP positions I've used in the past.  The PP seems rather tame/boring to me, which causes me to tinker around th...

Thanks to everyone contributing to this thread, it's gone places I didn't anticipate and has been very informative! However, I am interested in understanding the theoretical limit of the TLT price.  I'm not familiar with Japan's experience (although I'm digging into that now), but it's hard for me t...

It's been 20 years since I've tinkered with bond pricing and I'm trying to understand the interest rate risk of TLT at this point.  Figured I'd start here since you guys have been so helpful on other topics.  Today TLT was priced at about 123 and the yield on 30-years is something like 2.8%. What wo...

The first thing you need to do, before even concerning yourself with PP allocations and IRAs, is make sure you are maxing out the TSP agency contributions.  At $50/month, you're probably well short of that. 1. Get your TSP contributions up to 5% of your salary to capture the full matching contributi...

Really?  We're going to start comparing one month returns for our portfolios?  Why?  Do that and you will be switching horses every month or two... not a good idea. As for this observation: Using the ETF backtest at the link below of $100,000 permanent-portfolio (SHY, TLT, GLD, VTI); for the last fe...

We could get drunk and compare the size of our PPs. 

Oh, believe me, I know that I should ignore the charts.

I also know I shouldn't drink beer...

Well, I'm not usually one to question HB's wisdom, but the RE info you quoted seems a little naive. Still don't get the cancelling out unless you're only looking at cashflow (mortgage payments & bond interest).  And if it does "cancel out" the bonds, which I'd dispute, then why would y...