Libertarian666 wrote:Really? How interesting.

You're welcome to provide an example if you disagree.  If your argument against one asset class applies to all investable asset classes, the argument is neither valid nor relevant to this discussion, wouldn't you agree?

An investment in "land" is actually an investment in a piece of paper called a "deed". If you doubt this, think of what happens when a government invalidates deeds and/or transfers them to other people. What happens to your "land investment" then? Complete non-sequitor...

What makes you believe Bitcoin will be zero?  I could see that if some entity like the US government put on a concerted effort to shut it down, but otherwise, it's a very convenient way to send value across international borders without sticking gold coins up your *$$...  Please don't underestimate...

I think it's more likely that the bitcoin market is so small, the price is very easily manipulated.  With only 21M bitcoins ever possible, this plus the transaction limitations may be the most significant drawbacks this currency faces.

Good for you!  I reached the same conclusion about 18 months ago.  That site is the http equivalent of cancer.

But this really hasn't been happening. http://i40.tinypic.com/20glaf5.png Sure it is.  Expand your graph back to early 2009 when QE began.  Or for the more statistically minded, someone work us up a correlation matrix between the 3 assets for the following time periods: - 1972 to Jan 2009 - 2009 to...

So what's the alternative?  Cash?  Serious question. It's a good, and fair, question. One of the points on which I have always disagreed with Harry Browne is that he believes real estate is not an investment.  Despite the downturn, I have made more money in physical real estate investments than I h...

There have been other short periods where the assets have moved together (up or down). Usually I find there is a break where one or two split off then start to go opposite and the third continues the previous course. Thanks Craig… and yes, the above is true.  The difference in my mind is the vast a...

Thanks guys, and yes, I guess I didn't think the whole "Peak2" and "Peakto" thing through very well :) I like to set the detail level to 'daily' and run the YTD results.  http://www.peaktotrough.com/images/2013-p2t.jpg What I find most concerning about the 2013 results isn't the ...

I'm not sure I'll ever stop laughing at this…. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6DmHGYy_xk

There you go P2T :) Thank you very much! Yeah, the party has started already but you are still early. The masses have not yet joined so the best is yet to come. Prices will likely go from the current $500 to $5000 in already 1 year, $50,000 in 2 years, $500,000 in 3 years and may even overschoot to...

What a thread! I looked into building a mining rig earlier this year, just as everyone was about to transition to ASICs.  I finally decided it wasn't going to be worth the hassle with the difficulty increases that were sure to come after the ASICs finally delivered, and it looks like that is still t...

The thing that has me believing Lacy's prediction more than any other is that everyone is seemingly taking the other side of that bet. 

I don't find that incredible at all. If you have blinders on such that only stocks and bonds are "valid" investments, that result is pretty much guaranteed. Right, well what I'm saying is I find it incredible men with the collective financial knowledge of these esteemed gentlemen wear suc...

I'm a fan of Mebane Faber.  I've read his blog and the Ivy Porfolio and enjoy both.  In the case of this blog entry, I had a few thoughts... First, I wish he had continued with his original idea to write this up as a whitepaper.  I'm not sure I agree with his suggestion that a 200 basis point spread...

According to the calculator, the PP has experienced a DD of 7.21 YTD in late June. Is this accurate? I don't recall experiencing this magnitude of a loss, but I did contribute to GLD and TLT over this time frame. Great thread! Yep, it's accurate.  Keep in mind a couple of things: 1.  We're using da...

John is a very smart individual, no question about it.  That said, he's been wrong for so long now, that his only recourse is to continue making the same prediction until it actually turns out to be right.

I have often said that there are only two kinds of problems in life:  the kind that can be solved by money, and the kind that cannot.  You always want the former.

Wishing you the best, melvyr.

P2T

hedgehog wrote:We need a little more advanced programmer to do that, though.

Ummmm.... k.  Thanks for your feedback.

Shhhhhh! 

But I thought it was interesting that these ranges generally indicate that holding less cash and gold but more bonds and stocks has historically provided the best balance between performance and risk. Fantastic work!  It seems to me the hypothesis above is fairly intuitive as well, given the volati...

Could you run your allocations in the 30 years period ? Interesting point... I actually ran every decade independently when I started this and, as you would expect, got significantly different results for each.  I rather liken it to an exponential moving average vs a normal weight moving average in...

the most terrible thing investing is the monster DRAWDOWNS. Can you please let me now the TOP 10 drawdowns of the HB PP ? I agree that drawdowns are often overlooked, even by the HBPP crowd.  While I can't tell you what the 10 highest drawdowns were over a given period, you can do do the following ...

I see now.  But why are we first multiplying the Sharpe by StdDev? Because StdDev is the denominator in the original Sharpe ratio.  We're trying to isolate the original numerator (CAGR - RiskFreeCAGR) and then divide by the MaxDD to create a new ratio which is functionally equivalent to the Sharpe ...

This is great stuff, but I'm confused about the SharpeMDD.  How exactly is that being calculated?  I can't seem to back into it using the Sharpe and MaxDD values. It's the same as the Sharpe ratio, but the denominator is the MaxDD for that allocation rather than the standard deviation.  In other wo...