On HB's radio show, I think he responded a number of times to callers' questions regarding silver that he left it out of the PP due to the majority of its price being determined by industrial demand, not monetary demand. He wanted the PP's inflation protection to be based on a monetary metal--gold-...

Odysseusa wrote: Silver is much more volatile than Gold and Silver has not been around a long time like Gold [emphasis added]. 

Silver is more volatile than gold but it has definitely been around as long.  Silver and gold have both been used as money throughout recorded history. 

Since I really like the PP most of the time, I would just do the PP within that 20%, and make my whole portfolio as 4x25% during most periods. However, when I see an opportunity, I might pull out the 20% as a dedicated VP, isolate that money in my imagination so if I lose it, I don't start stealing...

For example, target date 2040 fund's current allocation is: 1 Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Investor Shares 62.5% 2 Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Investor Shares 27.2% 3 Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index Fund Investor Shares† 10.3% Total — 100.0% Wow, 79.7% equity exposur...

Do any of the inverse TSM etf's or funds have a place in the PP?  It seems that the principle is similar to gold or LTT; when stock are suffering these assets do well.  I'm just wondering if, for instance, you could do 20% TSM and 5% 2x inverse TSM or something, and rebalance within.  I know that 2...

3) at that point, there would be insufficient currency available to drive a hyperinflation, since mattress money is likely to be scarce and because branch banks keep only about $25,000-$50,000 in cash on hand. All of which implies we will go straight to deflation without the emancipating, hyperinfl...

Craig's 1972-2008 table is here, with updates for 2009 and 2010.

I am not at all close minded to new ideas if they make sense. Thats how I ended up with a PP. How do you guys perceive our monetary system with respect to the role of taxes, government surpluses, and debt? Where does a fiat currency come from? Why does a government need a tax to finance its spendin...

I'm surprised no one's brought up this book by G. Edward Griffin - it's the (true) story of the creation of the Federal Reserve System with a detailed history of earlier central banks in the US, the relationship between banking and politics (and war), etc etc.  Griffin has definite libertarian leani...

Isn't this fundamentally a loser's game (so to speak)?  I mean, if you think you can reliably predict what will go down, by shorting that same portfolio you'll be predicting a portfolio that will be reliably increasing.  In the grand scheme of things, this should be precisely as difficult as predict...

If you're truly risk averse (in the sense that you're willing to forgo some upside potential to avoid seeing your assets decrease), increasing the cash allocation and keeping the others equal to each other lets you dial down the volatility to essentially whatever you'd like.  For example (all number...

Eventually the Sun will go supernova as well.  If humanity wants to survive we're ultimately going to have to find other planets to live on.  Off hand, I'd say rebalancing human life on 4 planets might work fairly well.

In the same vein as Clive's "midway rebalancing" (for example, see this post ), rebalancing based on a more complex technical trigger might be better.  The dilemma is whether you should continue to let the winner run (or loser fall) or rebalance which takes the "excess" profits o...

What is "midway rebalancing"? And just so I am clear, ST bonds are something like 2-year Treasuries and not Cash, yes? Midway rebalancing is rebalancing not to 25/25/25/25 but halfway to that from wherever the allocation currently is.  For example, if one asset increased to 35 and another...

Another approach is to start with 100% PRPFX and put everything in PRPFX until you have a reasonable amount of money (say, £10,000) and then sell the PRPFX and establish your own 4x25 portfolio.  With this approach you're basically trading a lower transaction cost while you accumulate your initial 4...

Not unrelated - http://sendables.jibjab.com/originals/big_box_mart.  There's a serious point here, which is that there's more to "cost" than the price you pay in a store and the notion that other things are equal (other than the price) is simply not true.

LW - Do you track your overall return from your bonds, and is it essentially identical to SHY but about 0.15% (SHY's expense ratio) more?  SHY tracks a specific index (Barclays Capital U.S. 1-3 Year Treasury Bond Index).  I'd imagine the return from two different collections of 1-3 year bonds might ...

There's an existing thread on this, see http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/in ... opic=622.0.

MediumTex wrote: What is U.S. ticker for this fund?

It looks like discount to NAV is widening again today.

It trades over the counter as SVRZF.  Per a comment on a Yahoo forum here the plan is to list on AMEX when the net assets reach $100M (which they already have).

This is run by the same folks who are behind CEF and GTU, and (like those two) is a closed end fund that can trade above or below the NAV of the metal they own.  Do your own due diligence of course, but as a VP silver investment I think this is a screaming deal.

Do folks with substantial portfolios pick a day and rebalance - or is mechanically rebalancing over some fixed interval (e.g. one transaction per day over 2 weeks) with smaller transactions a reasonable idea?  As the portfolio size increases the absolute dollar amount involved in rebalancing becomes...

Also remember that gold is generally taxed as a collectible when you sell it (much higher than capital gains tax).  Some of the ETF's allow you to avoid this if you keep good records and fill out certain tax forms. Actually, none of the ETFs allow you to avoid the collectibles tax, it's only the cl...

In his later radio shows, HB emphasized the need to place some assets beyond the control of the US government.  So, choices #1, #3 and #4 don't meet that criteria, and #2 is no longer a realistic option. So, we're left with making the most of what we have.  Your earlier post glossed over the issue ...

Harry Browne's criteria for holding gold overseas does not call for a total absence of intermediary risks or risks arising from marauding armies or nuclear war.  So those considerations really don't fit into a discussion of his PP strategy.  He did suggest that a portion of one's assets be held ove...

Would goldmoney.com fit Harry Browne's criteria for holding gold in an overseas account? Hell no. Harry Browne's idea of gold is gold you can hold in your hand.  Wherever it is, you can go there and HOLD IT IN YOUR HAND.  You may not have immediate physical possession of it, but you know for sure it...