A fairly bleak picture that you present! He's a bully . . . From the perspective of the average working-class person in Russia, your statement above about bullies sounds a lot like the USA's hubristic behavior since the end of the cold war when they had promised that NATO wouldn't move one inch eas...

Which one of Fox or MSNBC is opposed to the US being heavily involved in Ukraine? Which of those two was opposed to the US invading Iraq in 2003 or whenever it was? I frankly can't remember, but I suspect they were both cheerleading for that fiasco and reporting breathlessly on the WMDs that the lyi...

See this 2-minute clip from a podcast interview that Tucker gave: https://twitter.com/JakeBequette91/status/1650585689912754178?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1650585689912754178%7Ctwgr%5E27a27237967761217e5c4e5871ab754dc16380ba%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.unz.c...

Are you saying the data show that the rate of symptomatic Covid is no lower in vaccinated people than in unvaccinated people? If that is what you are saying, could you point me to a place where this is documented? This would have to be a place that would be accepted by smart, medical professionals w...

Sophie, I'd still love to hear your thoughts about the COVID vaccine in general if you feel inclined to share them with us. But if not, I understand why you might not care to respond. The political environment we live in does not allow for the safe and free expression of opinions. Certain topics ha...

Split off from How much to save for retirement (Sophie) / DS

Sophie,

I'd still love to hear your thoughts about the COVID vaccine in general if you feel inclined to share them with us. But if not, I understand why you might not care to respond.

Thank you to those who responded to my very broad question. I've read your responses and the materials you pointed me to, and my thinking is clearing up a little bit. Let me ask maybe a simpler question: Is there any general correlation between the strength of the US dollar and the returns that a US...

I'm back with another question, hoping for more input from you good people who undoubtedly understand this stuff better than I do. Yesterday I read a recommendation from a well-known investor (Marc Faber) who says that the way for a US investor to hedge against the US dollar losing global reserve st...

It's a good point. If you test it at portfoliovisualizer.com, you'll see that 50/50 stocks/gold from 1976 to 2022 did do a little worse than 60/40 stocks/bonds, but 50/50 stocks/gold did about the same as 50/50 stocks/bonds. There's really nothing wrong with a 50/50 stocks/gold portfolio.

No, I wouldn't feel comfortable with 50/50 stocks/gold. I need some cash to feel comfortable. This discussion has inspired me to come up with a couple more alternative retirement portfolios: Option 1: 25% total US stock market 25% small-cap value US stocks 25% gold 25% short-term Treasuries Option 2...

The only portfolio ever posted here that was arguably stupid was techno's 50%+ gold allocation Honestly, I didn't understand his portfolio back when he was posting here, but I get it now. He was far ahead of me in contempt for the US government political and financial leadership at places like the ...

It seems there's a difference of opinion on whether foreign stocks are a good idea for a US investor in my shoes. I'll have to think more about that. I have a home-country bias, but I'm not completely opposed to foreign for a diversification benefit. Here is what I'm thinking of shifting toward in t...

Seajay, thank you for your excellent comments. I found them very helpful, and I share many of your views. You mentioned investing in US land/home, global stocks, and gold. As a followup question, what about US bonds or global bonds? Did the prudent British investor have any of his/her money in bonds...

We run pretty much a Golden Butterfly portfolio. We hope to retire in a few years. We don't really need any growth in our portfolio to make retirement possible, but we don't want to lose out to inflation and a little real growth would certainly help. My wife and I will have some pensions and Social ...

Sophie, Thanks for the helpful information you've provided here. You mentioned it's important to hire aides privately and not through an agency. I'm not clear on this terminology. When you say an "agency," are you talking about some kind of government agency or do you mean private agencies...

Kevin K, you identified one thing that I'm not comfortable with, which is too much active management and corporate bonds in the Rollover IRA. I think this might be a better plan for the IRA: 10% IAUM (paper gold) 45% VBIAX (Vanguard Balanced Index Fund) 45% VWENX (Wellington Fund) With this idea, th...

I've been thinking about how to simplify things for my wife to be able to handle when I'm gone and still keep some of the benefits of the PP/GP philosophy. She's a smart, professional-career woman, but she doesn't have a lot of interest in maintaining financial stuff. I can teach her how to handle t...

British perspective since 1793 for 50/50 US$ invested in US stocks/gold. Where when gold was money (Sovereign gold One Pound coins pre 1930's) its assumed that they lent that gold (money) to the state, as a form of safe keeping of their gold coins - which in return they were paid interest. From 193...

That's my question, though, is whether it fits in with the HBPP mentality. He seems to be saying to pick stocks with high risk/reward for better rebalancing opportunities. Would HB say to put all your stock allocation into SCV rather than splitting half and half between SCV and LCG? Or is there some...

Do you think splitting up your stock allocation into half total stock market index and half small cap value index is a move in the right direction in terms of Harry Browne's philosophy of using volatile stocks with high beta? Of course, this is the Golden Butterfly strategy, but of course each perso...

So the only portion in which you have gold is the income model?

I try to keep my gold at 15-20% myself. I agree with you it's a great diversifier and insurance asset, especially if you hold some physical. I just recently upped my physical amount, and I feel very good about that.

mathjak107, I noticed above you said you rebalanced out of short-term bonds and gold recently. Do you have a fixed percentage (or range) of gold that you keep in your portfolio? Or does your target gold percentage vary based on some factor(s)? Just curious to get your perspective on this. I like to ...

An interesting source of apparently evenly-biased information on Russia at Harvard University that I just came across: https://www.russiamatters.org/ Happy 2023 everybody. Here's hoping for good things for the Ukrainian people, whatever that means. If NATO is a good guy, I hope they win soon, so Ukr...

Well-known traitor to America, Tulsi Gabbard, speaks on the Ukraine conflict: https://twitter.com/tulsigabbard/status/1496695830715142148?lang=en https://www.news.com.au/world/europe/former-congresswoman-tulsi-gabbard-declares-us-has-turned-ukraine-conflict-into-a-proxy-war/news-story/d4ea4d97c78ca8...

That's the point here. Just because they couldn't have a little foresight to see that flirting with NATO was going to bring huge problems their way, doesn't mean that we should be shipping weapons over there to try to bail them out at the last minute. ... I'm not as cynical as some, but I certainly...