I mentioned in my deflation rambling that investor Jim Rogers likes gold again at $950, approximately half the price of its 2011 high.  Rogers suggests that is a proper retracing of the big increase.  Harry Dent, the deflation guy, said watch for gold to drop to $600 with an ultimate landing at $25...

Does anyone besides me have trouble putting a certain experience in their past into the "did" or "didn't" category?

Or does this fall into the category of "over-sharing?"

Damn, why didn't I buy gold at 1190? I was so close to picking up the phone and I did not follow through.  :o Dualstow, Today is why you didn't buy at 1190. Tech, I read an article you linked back in January to the effect that Gold ETF withdrawals were responsible for the fall in the price of gold....

HB Reader, Thanks for reminding me of that. Your post was excellent and here is a link to that thread: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/gold/gold-and-inflation/ In that one Tiburon was essentially asking the same question I am asking. Still thinking this through. I am familiar with the negative-...

There must have been a thread or three about this already but I haven't seen anything yet... Absent dramatic inflation here in the US in the last 30 plus years, why did gold go so high in the period between 2001 & 2012? Loss of confidence in the US Dollar? Inflation outside of the US? Jim Rickar...

Here's the first hit I got: http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/DustBowl/DroughtintheDustBowlYears.aspx The resulting agricultural depression contributed to the Great Depression’s bank closures, business losses, increased unemployment, and other physical and emotional hardships Certainly a contribu...

I currently have a mortgage but plan on killing it by the end of the year.  I consider a paid-off house the 5th leg of my personal Permanent Portfolio.  I realize it's not an investment, but having a debt-free house to cover my living needs (and trade for cash later if I desire) is one extra layer ...

Me again. The main role of gold in the PP is to really perform when there is serious inflation or when people perceive that the USD is shaky. Let's consider a recent Chinese PP... the Chinese have essentially pegged the Renminbi to the dollar so gold's performance in China has been strongly negative...

happyspec, Welcome to the forum. Wish I could give you a non-EU perspective, but, alas I live in the US. I think in your position though, I would be less concerned with tweaking the stock portion than I would be with the fact that gold is priced in US Dollars. I was able to find this chart online fo...

Yeah, I used to travel like a madman and could easily have imagined that an overseas safe deposit box would be a viable option. Maybe geographical diversification is a young person's game. Interesting point, Dualstow, about balancing your heirs' need to get at your assets versus a scenario where you...

Yeah, I asked about Canada as an option because it's easy for me to get to and I have friends there. Austria is not a big draw for me. I was last there in 2010 or so. I went to New Zealand & Australia in 1982. Both are nice places but are way the hell away from the east coast where I am located....

I was just reading over Craig's blog post from 5/1/14 on geographical diversification and have linked it here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160324133409/http://www.crawlingroad.com/blog/2014/05/01/geographic-diversification-is-not-just-for-doomsday/ Just curious if any of you on this forum have don...

dragoncar wrote: Until tax time

But doesn't that tax advantage virtually disappear for lower to middle income people? In general people seem to be better of carrying a lower debt load. I know for me personally the MID never made a lot of sense. For higher income earners, it probably does.

Bedraggled, The problem, as I see it, is if you shift your balance to, say, 40% LTTs, then your portfolio doesn't stand the test of holding enough of the other assets so that when it is time for them to perform, they will carry the whole portfolio. Let's take a simple example and assume that you hav...

Buying a house with cash might not always be the absolute smartest long-term financial move in dollar terms, but I don't know of too many people who have a paid off house and are anxious about it. I think it also depends on how old you are. To a younger person the idea of 20-30 years of payments mig...

Thanks for posting that, PS. Just realized that I forgot to add in dividends on the S&P. TLT behaves a bit differently than my individual bonds as well.

Yeah, I would take 5.5% above inflation!

Ouch! I think not sleeping and having a wife who is terrified of what the family's financial future will be is an awfully high price to pay for a strategy that is only sometimes on the plus side of a more balanced approach. Good that you stayed the course and then got the hell out of there. 2008 is ...

Am I correct that PP is up 5+% YTD? No, it's a bit better than that but everyone's PP returns vary slightly depending on a number of factors (which bonds they hold, where they have their cash, what premium they are paying for physical gold, whether or not they start the calendar year exactly at 4X2...

I sure HOPE it makes sense because I have a bit of IAU in both my regular Roth and solo 401(k) Roth. I realize that for tax efficiency, taking up space in IRAs with gold is a negative. But I hold enough there to (hopefully) give me a rebalancing alternative within those tax-free accounts. What to ho...

WAH, the toast image is clearly that of a tea kettle with steam coming out the spout.

In Indonesia there are signs on public busses that read "Jangan meludah di lantai." Or, "Don't spit on the floor." They are similarly ineffective but they don't come with a death threat.

Mark, Thanks for posting that. As a humorous side note, I met Claude Shannon a few times ages ago but it was in relation to one of his side hobbies & for years I didn't know who the heck he really was. I often preface stuff that I post on here with the caveat that I am new to the PP. That being ...

Bedraggled, We are not able to ridicule you until you reach at least 100 posts! Seriously, if you overload on 30-year bonds up front and we do experience deflation, you will have done well. If we get inflation, your bonds will lose in value and you'll be closer to a 4X25 balance. I think it's a usef...

The bands at 35/15 help us avoid capital gains taxes.  I was specifically talking about rebalancing more often in tax-deferred accounts. Sorry if that wasn't clear. As for how often we are "supposed" to check, well, a truly diversified portfolio gives us the option of not checking frequen...

Not sure if he is still active on this forum but Edsanville posted some fascinating rebalancing data that looked at everything from extremely narrow bands up to bands that were at least 40% (not sure about the low end... maybe 10%). What I got from those data is that if you factor out transaction co...

Do you think it would be difficult to maintain a positive return n a 25/25/25/25 PP in a Japan-styled investing environment? The Japan question is on a lot of people's minds right now. Interesting because there seem to be fewer people saying that interest rates just HAVE to go up. That has been the...