The article goes on to recount, move by move, how the investigation itself was a set-up designed to manufacture a crime. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-12-03/what-media-isnt-telling-you-about-indictment-mike-flynn Thanks for the link, Maddy. If Yates’s motivation was as the article describes an...

Everyone is using total return data sets, yes? I use total return for all of my data. I'm curious what you use for S&P 500 total returns prior to 1988. I used http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm, which states, "Stock price data are monthly averages of daily closing prices." I a...

Gotta wonder what Antonacci used pre-1988.

I was backtesting what you are proposing and got some strange results as the optimal allocation based on the backtest was to not use the HBPP at all and just to use the GEM allocation strategy for 100% of your money. I thought about it more and convinced myself that the GEM system generated enough ...

The way he's going after cnn in this AT&T deal, I'd say he's restoring vindictiveness and perhaps tyranny. He's certainly doing his best. Fortunately the checks and balances in our government have largely contained him, preventing him from passing anything of note, even with a GOP congress. I d...

Google Finance is under renovation. ... I mentioned this in the Google Docs thread, and there it is. You scared me there for a minute. Actually, I'm still scared. So you mentioned this in the Docs thread, but it's just about Google Finance...right? I mean, will we still be able to use google sheets...

In large part because of the whackiness of November 2016, which created an interesting blip between the S&P 500 and international markets. Unless the S&P goes crazy this month, it’s clearly international next month. I reckon it doesn’t matter what you do when it’s this close as long as you d...

Shawn, glad to hear someone else has tried that Fidelity bullion program. I noticed a while ago they'd lowered their prices, so the fees are comparable to the ETFs if you hold it for a few years. I don't know why I've been hesitant to pull the trigger, I guess because no one else on the board has t...

1/2 mix of IAU and SGOL because they're available and cheap. 1/2 bullion (Buffalo) through Fidelity. I don't like the responsibility of securing and selling coins (or foisting the same on my survivors). Fidelity bullion gives me a chunk that's plainly worth what the metal is worth and theoretically ...

Nice! I love it when brokerages are cutting fees so fast you can't keep up. :D It’s amazing how even that small fee is enough to make me think twice vs. a similar commission-free fund that may have other risks like lower volume or reliance on securities lending. But whenever that happens I just ima...

Agreed at $8 but you will enjoy even more negligible $5 trades next time you rebalance. Nice! I love it when brokerages are cutting fees so fast you can't keep up. :D It’s amazing how even that small fee is enough to make me think twice vs. a similar commission-free fund that may have other risks l...

FWIW, I've been paying $8 per VTI trade at Fidelity for years and the impact of the commission on my bottom line is completely negligible for how little I trade. Agreed at $8 but you will enjoy even more negligible $5 trades next time you rebalance. Nice! I love it when brokerages are cutting fees ...

It was an interesting time to test (aren’t they all?). I bought into a nice 10.8% drawdown July 14 2016 to December 31 to learn the value of the big cash buffer. December 31 to June 1 2016 went up enough to almost make it back before calling it.

I pulled my small VP after several months and realizing I couldn’t stomach the periods when the returns were like 2x HBPP and volatility was like 3x. I thought I could handle it but I couldn’t. No harm no foul, one less spreadsheet to track. Huge respect to Kbg for breaking it all down so clearly an...

Tyler wrote:FWIW, I've been paying $8 per VTI trade at Fidelity for years and the impact of the commission on my bottom line is completely negligible for how little I trade.

Agreed at $8 but you will enjoy even more negligible $5 trades next time you rebalance.

I am really going to enjoy seeing the tweets, or lack of them, when/if this reverses during his term. Anyone's fault but his, of course, when it goes down. Right. I’ve also been noticing him enjoying taking credit, but I don’t think anyone will enjoy the tweets when he lashes out blaming everyone e...

moda0306 wrote:
I only threw the marginal cost ($600) as a PV into the calculator... so PV: $600 N:10 (years) I: 6% FV: 0 PMT = $81.52.

I don't usually do monthly payments. I hate dividing and multiplying by 12.

Thanks

But think about it... $1,000 is the gross cost, but let's say the "cheaper" alternative is $400, so your marginal cost is $600. Let's also assume that your useful life of that bed is 10 years. And your opportunity cost on your money is 6%. This comes to $81.52 per year. Now I’m curious ho...

My wife got a call about the Vanguard vote. I didn’t pay attention to the provenance of the call. In retrospect it’s a little strange because we have no investment accounts with them directly but hold some Vanguard ETFs through Fidelity. I did not receive a call. We both received online proxy materi...

Great info on latex and memory foam here worth the price of admission. I will save this thread for next time.

I often wonder why water beds ever sold. My parents had one for 25 years before they moved their room upstairs. As a kid it was fascinating, but obviously kind of like being in a boat.

We’ve bought a couple beds for the kids over the past couple years and I went both ways on the platform vs. box question after some head scratching. It seems there is no difference these days and it’s all about height and something to place the mattress on. The one on an antique bed frame with retro...

I enjoy pulling out the rabbit ears a few times a year to watch a football game. Only our local NBC station uses the lower channel range requiring the telescoping ears these days since the others use the higher channels picked up by the central paddle for their digital signals. Alas, tennis and othe...

Other than Google finance for quick glances, only a spreadsheet tab with manual tracking of inflows, outflows, and the current balance. Using the XIRR function, I get the return for YTD and past years, no fine grained snapshots or charting. It's annoying enough to import the balance that I don't do ...

Google Finance is under renovation. As a part of this process, the Portfolios feature won't be available after mid-November 2017. To keep a copy, download your portfolio. I mentioned this in the Google Docs thread, and there it is. The above death notice is currently displayed on my portfolio page....

Meanwhile, someone reported on another forum that Google finance is being rewritten and they are axing the portfolios feature. I do use that! I figured they'd ax the whole product, but no, just the more complicated feature I actually use.