budd...how u feel today? The insurance policy paid off and I have a deeper understanding of the role gold is intended to play in the portfolio. How long is your understanding?  I have followed your posts and I don't ever believe you can be happy with the PP.  Ever body on this board tried to help y...

I personally have been invested in the PP since 2011 (taxable) and have significant long-term losses in gold (PP CAGR 4.35%). A loss, in and of itself, is not sufficient to challenge the investment philosophy, but the success of the overall portfolio appears dependent on the performance of this ind...

Ahh, now I understand what you are getting at! Mike Another look at gold from Jan 1980 to July 2014 shows a CAGR of 2.75% vs 6.23% for 3 year treasury bills!  The goverment shows CPI or a rough measure of inflation @ 3.1%.  Your estate is missing $55,000 on a $10,000 investment.  It is sad but your...

Not that I'd try to encourage anyone to stay in or leave the PP, but am I missing some recent event that is causing all of this angst? Or is it just angst over individual components of the overall strategy? Last I checked the PP is still up about 7% YTD. Today's decline is maybe 0.25%? Stocks are 5...

Ahh, now I understand what you are getting at! Mike Another look at gold from Jan 1980 to July 2014 shows a CAGR of 2.75% vs 6.23% for 3 year treasury bills!  The goverment shows CPI or a rough measure of inflation @ 3.1%.  Your estate is missing $55,000 on a $10,000 investment.  It is sad but your...

ModelJC, So you're going to pick the Jan 1980 peak, and stop at 2004.  Seems like someone is trying to manipulate their end result. Pretty sure I can pick appropriate timeframes for any asset and make them look very good or very bad. :D Mike Try picking a major asset class for 24 years and leave ou...

Most folks can't believe in an asset class that producded -.86 CAGR from Jan. 1980 thru Jan. 2004 or DEAD money for 24 years.  Gets real heavy to carry when 3 year old treasuries had a CAGR of + 7.94%. 

At halftime, I got three year PP returns of +20% and three years of Inflation at +5%.  That is a FAT bogey of 5% per year! By year end I hope two year PP returns will equal 3% or more after inflation.  We need a 2014 PP return of +10% or so to get to an acceptable bogey for 2013 and 2014.

I don't want to pick on you.  But I don't think you be able to sleep with any allocation!  You will never, never time gold or stocks as you be late to buy and real late to sell.  Sorry. Did you backtest this? Because my backtesting strongly disagrees. Mind you I'm not trying to avoid dime a dozen 1...

Isn't it great on a bad stock market day like today to have a fantastic vehicle like the PP to not only keep you from sinking but to actually provide a sizeable gain? :) It really, really hurts the PP when bonds or gold goes the wrong way.  That's what caused the 26.50% MaxDD.  And it was not just ...

The Federal Reserve Bank Minneapolis Dollar calculator has $1.00 worth $6.79 after 46 years.  That is a inflation rate of 4.3% or a real bogey of 3.5% for the PP.  Craig would be happy and I would be happy also.  The problem is most of us can't sit still and manage our own monies.  I know I like to ...

Desert wrote: MG, welcome back to the forum! 

Are you going to go 100% into long treasuries?  If so, when?

I would be interested to know your current allocation.  It sounds like you may not be  a PP believer.

There is still a minimum $10 monthly market data charge, if you do less than $30 in trade commissions. This is for the normal non-pro market data, which does not include real time bond prices or options. You can turn the market data off for the months you are not trading in the account. I believe t...

I have a IB account and find it to be a very good broker.  I have never purchases U S Treasuries and wonder about the cost and the spread of purchasing 30 year bonds. 

So if you think 2.25% is the Federal funds rate, then guess what WVINX will lose in 2015, 2016.  My guess is that if you pick up 2014 returns of 7% you will still be down in 2016.  Almost cash like but not for two years.

In regards to VWINX, realizing of course we are speculating for conversation here.  In 40 years, the worst year end for VWINX is -9.84% in the 08 crash.  The other mitigating factor is that this fund is managed and not an index fund so the fund guidelines in the prospectus allow the managers to tak...

I've also been considering what to do with the Cash part due to low yield, still accumulating, and have a deprecate emergency fund. (Currently my "cash" part is split between VG Prime Money Market and VG ST Bond index, and less than 25% target.) What you have now (assuming other aspects a...

I would have thought decay would have shown up in four years of returns?  The annual 15/35 rebalance seems to help.  Appears to have a 13.8% annual return.

Wow. Even a PP investor would have been decimated in quite a few occurrences, with almost only his gold left. Must be pretty hard to rebalance in those circumstances. Your bonds & stocks lost 90% and 95% of their respective values ? Why don't you sell 3/4 of your gold to buy some more ? Craig, ...

This poll failed.  Only 18 votes.  The winning asset poll for 2014 got 59 votes.  Taking from the winning asset poll and applying the % for TLT.

4 members that thinks TLT will be up from 2% to 22%.  And 3 members think it will be down 6% to 18%

fnord123 wrote: WIW and WIA both invest up to 40% of their funds in non-US gov't stuff.  WIW even invests in stuff that is below investment grade.  As such, these seem to be more appropriate for the VP than the PP.

My site says 77% is in US tips.  Yes I bought it for the VP.

I never implemented this, mostly because I found additional ways to buy I-Bonds (in child's name + in a living trust). When my current high yielding (sad when ~3% is high yielding) CDs run out in 2015, which currently are the bottom of my cash component and have a similar role as TIPS were proposed...

Saxo's balanced portfolio turned in a similar result (-2.9 %) to the PP. http://www.tradingfloor.com/posts/global-beta-29-percent-loss-2013-books-closed-605844721 You'll recall that it's based on a macro model like the the PP but uses a more complex engineered asset mix.  The most obvious point of ...

Decision Moose is free for today and I would recommend looking at it while you can. He has a very good long term track record and has added a new twist as well. http://www.decisionmoose.com/Moosecalls.html I like to chase performance!  The PP is up 45% or 7.8% while DM is up 32.8% or 5.8% over the ...

dualstow wrote: Ok, I'll say 73.56 which is 72% of today's closing price. Just for funsies.

Hey that the spirit.  Thanks.  The 52 week dividend yield was $3.32.  So that would be a yield of about 4.5% going forward.