Last post for a while, I promise. [img width=600]http://i.imgur.com/qqOtJ6I.jpg[/img] This chart is similar to the one I posted yesterday, but this one was calculated for a PP with biennial (every two years) rebalancing on the anniversary.  So, starting January 1 1972 and then rebalancing on Jan 1 1...

Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me but you can really see the January/February effect on that line chart. It's small but pretty consistent. Thanks for the charts/graphs. Iwealth, I think it's an artifact arising from the way I calculated the returns.  The January and February data include the r...

[img width=600]http://i.imgur.com/Oz9crTM.jpg[/img] Taking the final values from the right-hand side of each line in the chart above gives the following chart of real CAGRs over the years for annual-rebalance-on-anniversary PPs: [img width=600]http://i.imgur.com/417ep7P.jpg[/img] That's a pretty co...

1972  2014  2015 Jan  4.712%  4.838% Feb  4.739%  4.921% Mar  4.719%  4.783% Apr  4.645%  4.732% May  4.401%  4.416% Jun  4.306% Jul  4.412% Aug  4.363% Sep  4.456% Oct  4.472% Nov  4.363% Dec  4.583% Sorry about the earlier post (I posted instead of previewed).  These are the real CAGRs from my ch...

[img width=600]http://i.imgur.com/Oz9crTM.jpg[/img] Here's a full chart of the real CAGRs of PPs started on the first of the month of every month since January 1972.  These PPs are rebalanced annually, with dividends reinvested.  Again, I took the PP data from PeakToTrough.com and CPI-U data from bl...

[img width=500]http://i.imgur.com/ZJxPo4g.jpg[/img] In case anyone's interested, I updated my earlier chart of the last 10 years of monthly PPs, incorporating the May CPI-U number.  Nothing major to see.  I started my PP in May 2013; the yellow bar after two years invested agrees with the 2.00% real...

According to the charts on kitco , the gold spot price rose about 1.3% from 4 pm on June 17 ($1187) to 4 pm on June 18 ($1202).  That's when the NYSE closes and that's when you should be comparing the price of any gold-tracking ETF or CEF.  There was an increase of about 2.4% if you look at the Lond...

One thing I wasn't quite certain of in the offer is whether the trade is for the current value (including the discount), or at a zero discount.  Does anyone know for certain what "nav to nav basis" means? At the current discount of -6.3%, I'd lose out since I got some shares at -4%.  It may never t...

While I was still in the mood for playing with Excel, I thought I'd try changing the starting month in my earlier appendix wedge chart for a bit more granularity.  Not everyone starts their PP on January 1st, nor rebalances on January 1st, so I crunched some numbers for different starting dates (the...

Apologies to Tyler, but I've made this appendix for his chart to take into consideration the last 10 years.  I've stuck to his format, but the colors are slightly different.  Again, these are real returns and the same conclusions can be drawn: no negative three-year returns. [img width=300]http://i....

Hi Flagator, welcome to the board. I began my PP just over two years ago, after about 15 years with no firm investing philosophy.  I had doubled my money as a newbie during the dotcom era, then lost about 80% of that using a combination of stupidity, ignorance, inexperience, and blind trust.  Eventu...

@PetHog: Think of each data point as a snapshot on Jan 1st of each year.  So invested Jan 1st 1972 and withdrawn Jan 1st 1973.  This way, the first column reflects the real return for the initial investment year.  I understand it's a little confusing on the surface, but the "years held" in the late...