I disagree with the chart.

Bad data.

Email from cnn: The brother of slain Cecil the lion, named Jericho, was killed today in Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, a senior park official told CNN. Jericho was gunned down by a hunter operating illegally, said Johnny Rodrigues, head of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force. ??? { Eyes LC475 s...

If it is a bet against the US dollar, it seems a strange way to bet against the US dollar.  That is, by using 25% of your wealth to buy US dollars.  That is not the normal way investors/speculators make bets against things.  If you want to bet against something, you do not put 25% of your assets int...

Makes me want to go kill a lion.

Who cares about a stupid lion?

How in the world is this national news?

The ETF SGOL, trading "free" at Schwab, has an expense ratio of 0.39%, and it's paper promises. Why do you say that?  There is an annual inspection. http://www.etfsecurities.com/Documents/SGOL%20-%20Au%2040391%20-%20Letter%20-%2009.01.15.pdf It would seem that the gold bars are all there,...

Hope this clarifies. Yes, that does clarify. You are lumping the cash with the bonds and saying all together it's a bunch of 5 or 6 year duration bonds, and that's 50%. It's a perfectly valid and correct way of looking at it. However, I do not think it is the ideal way to be looking at it and think...

That aside, the only other difference between the portfolios is the amount allocated to equities. It is 100% in the BH portfolio and split 25% equities, 25% gold in the PP. What do you mean?  Are you counting gold as a kind of equity? I see gold as more of an alternative type of cash.  US dollars a...

After a long and protracted argument, MachineGhost withdrew his claim of 25% max drawdown, although he never admitted he had been wrong. Well, while this interpretation makes me look good, since I was the one questioning him on the claim..... it's not quite so simple. The draw-down that MachineGhos...

Help me rationalize. I've said it before and I will say it again...the PP goes ONLY as GOLD goes. Well, I mean, I don't think that's true, as the charts of gold and of the PP look quite different.  But I don't know that that will help you as you requested. Here's something that may help: it seems t...

Some of us need reassurance from time to time that the portfolio is "working just fine." A 6% drawdown happens pretty frequently. Got it. And I also get Tyler's point that January's big gain was an outlier. I believe there is a huge difference between how a young investor views a drawdown...

The fact that you have successfully used a 60/40 portfolio for decades says to me that the PP might indeed not be right for you; you can clearly tolerate a good bit of volatility. The Permanent Portfolio isn't just for people who can't tolerate volatility. It's for people with humility. The PP: It'...

This is where you seem to struggle most with understanding the psyche of this forum's members. This is a no-pucker-factor zone. It's a place where people are willing to accept lower returns in exchange for less drawdown anxiety. Actually, for me,  I'm in no hurry for my money.  I have a long time h...

mathjak107 wrote: there have been no bad markets to date, only bad planning.

Well, maybe there's no such thing as a "bad" market, but there certainly is such a thing as an unprofitable-to-investors market.

  That is hardly true and to date the pp can only claim to be less volatile not safer . If we are all in agreement with this then I can stop addressing this belief that any other allocation is unsafe and we can all move on and further our education in planning for our retirements and future . As Ha...

If you want to keep believing that the investment gods will wipe out all non-believers feel free, but you likely will be once again quite wrong. As one of the few local token PP-believers, I will reply to this one. For me, it's not that I think that all other portfolios will crash disastrously.  Fa...

Why is M2 money velocity at a multi-decade low? Because people are preferring to hold onto their money rather than spend it, more so than in the past several decades.  "People" in this case includes bankers -- the personal savings rate has risen, but the banks' savings rate ("excess ...

Of course, the real answer is that there is no such thing as "velocity of money". Money is always in someone's cash balance; there is no time when it is "moving". Well, while you are right if you look at it a certain way, there is a measurement that does measure something real. ...

in the mean time valuable space in the deferred account would be taken up by little compounding cash and bonds for years. Or perhaps the big-compounding cash and bonds, from whom space is being taken up by the low-income-producing stocks. As goodasgold pointed out so well, situations can change.  I...

Why is M2 money velocity at a multi-decade low? Because people are preferring to hold onto their money rather than spend it, more so than in the past several decades.  "People" in this case includes bankers -- the personal savings rate has risen, but the banks' savings rate ("excess r...

"[Super-Smart Alpha-Male Investors] have been able to avoid the allure of a permanent portfolio, and move their strategy with the market. Those who did so in 2012 and saw value in equities have beaten the Permanent Portfolio. So did those who bought high yield bonds, or those who went into real...

Another one bites the dust...not surprised...aren't these the same people that were telling me just weeks ago that the PP was not for me!! Go figure... Ha, ha, ha!  Yes, indeed, buddtholomew, pretty ironic. By the way, I hope you don't take it personally when I defend the HBPP.  I think it's fine y...

So gold and anti-gold can and have been falling simultaneously now ... since February 1. Yes, and they were both rising simultaneously for much of the 2000-2010 decade.  Economics isn't billiards.  People are not billiard balls.  People try to anticipate developments.  To avoid making the same mist...

I always come back to not investing in something that I don't understand. In order to justify holding gold, I therefore need at least a belief that I know what was behind that run up You don't have to understand all the thing's price movements, you just have to understand the thing itself: what it ...

Having a VP and a separate PP is delusional?  To the contrary, putting funds in different buckets can be extremely valuable.  Drawing demarcation lines and making certain funds "off-limits" is of very high value to most people.  Look at automatic savings programs that transfer funds from o...