I guess we'll see how this plays out. I might have been convinced about a general shift to the left, but the degree to which polls have been consistently biased to the left, plus the NYC primary results are telling a different story. It looks like Eric Adams, who despite being vilified in the mainst...

I didn't want to get into that degree of specificity, but yes to all of that. As far as Idaho and the other transplant states: What will happen when they all inevitably go blue in 2 decades? Will there then be a newer even further left color that will start (duh) in CA and then start infesting NY, ...

Negative real interest rates to this degree (> 4%) are almost unprecedented in the post gold era, but we can look to the 1970s when real rates were negative (2-3%) and occasionally higher for short periods of time. The answer was that the PP did incredibly well in the 1970s because gold responded ve...

One could just replace the long/short Treasury barbell with mostly ITT's and a smattering of iBonds and call it a day (that's what I've done for now), or if younger and still years away from retirement use EE and iBonds for the entire bond/cash allocation since they're the only Treasury securities ...

I just tried Tortoise's link, and now it's working.

It says you can file if you sold physical gold sometime between 2004 and June 30, 2013. Guess when my gold sale was? July 22, 2013. D'OH!!!!!!!!!!!

The gods seem determined to be unkind to me lately....

Thanks Tortoise but it came up with an error....

FWIW, APMEX said they're not aware of any such class action suit.

I didn't get any paperwork in the mail, because the only gold I sold in that time period was physical (to APMEX). I did that to tax loss harvest, and it was a reasonably large amount - so I have the documentation and theoretically all I need to file a claim. I wrote to APMEX (where I sold the coins)...

Brilliant idea, to run on a Republican platform but as a Democrat. It might just work if he says all the right woke-like things in between bursts of common sense. Then those common sense ideas won't be as readily smearable by tagging them with words like "Republican" and "Trump"....

I don't know how Fidelity is doing it, but they still have no minimum to invest, are still open to new investors, and haven't broken the buck. My guess is that they are able to compensate for the zero or negative 1 month bills by holding some assets in longer-durations. They probably also have auto ...

Where are YOU getting your data from? I went to this webpage (you have to click on "trends" to get to this): https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-trends.page Then click on "hospitalizations" which is the most reliable statistic to use. "Cases" is completely...

Tucker Carlson is calling the desire to continue to wear masks despite the CDC's recommendation evidence of neurosis. Many of these people plan to wear masks indefinitely I guess, because COVID will always be with us and no vaccine is ever going to be 100% protective. My sister & family are good...

Crime stats reported by the NYPD form April 2021, compared to April 2020: Overall: 30.4% increase Grand larceny: 66% increase Shooting incidents: 166% increase Murder: 15.8% increase Police arrests for gun-related crimes: 3.7% increase. Note the disparity with the increase in shooting incidents. Cri...

I forgot to mention that contribution of the new bail law. That was Andrew Cuomo's way of giving NYC a huge middle finger, I take it. That law should have been called what it is: a new catch and release policy for criminals of all types, including violent ones.

Interesting comparison, Shrugged! A similar comparison can be made for home prices. My parents bought their house in 1968 for $45,000. At the time, my father was working as a civil engineer for $8,000 a year. That prices the house at 5.6x salary. Today, that same house will sell for $600-700K (it's ...

I saw an article about how NYC police are gearing up in expectation of a long, hot, violent summer. With the warmer weather this past week, the number of violent incidents popping up on my Citizen app has gotten quite alarming. Subway stabbings, murders, armed home break-ins, etc....at least 1 or 2 ...

The majority of mask wearers were non white. I am 100% certain exactly zero percent of them were making a political statement of any kind. Huh, interesting. It's exactly the opposite here in NYC. Lots of people are walking around without masks in the beautiful spring weather, and it's wonderful to ...

Whenever you rebalance, almost by definition you feel like you're about to make huge mistake. Because, you're selling assets that have shot up in value and that everyone is dazzled by and wants to buy more of. And you're buying assets that have gone into the crapper and that everyone is telling you ...

The undertone here is: How dare the American people disagree with us, CNN, the font of all that is holy?? Based on their numbers it looks like about half the population (70% of Republicans, 30% of Democrats) believe that the election results were not valid. I don't care what CNN's opinion is, in the...

Some random internet dude (https://www.investwithfire.com/dragon-portfolio-protect-your-wealth/) suggested this allocation: Dragon Portfolio 24% Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) 18% Long-Term Government Bonds – via the iShares Barclays 20+ Year US Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) 21% Long Volatility – ...

Long time Fidelity customer here. You have to keep in mind that they are a discount brokerage. They provide excellent services, but their customer service at the individual level is meant to be used only minimally. I have had generally - but not universally - good experiences when calling them for a...

An RMD cannot be rolled over to a Roth. If you are above the age at which RMDs are required, you must take your RMD before you do any Roth conversions. Ah, didn't know that. If you don't have a lot of money in tax-deferred I guess you wouldn't need to worry so much about withdrawals kicking you int...

Another consideration: inheritance. This is going to be extra tricky to manage because we simply don't know whether Biden's current proposals will pass. These include reducing the estate tax exclusion from $11.5M to $3.5M, which will devastate small businesses that will effectively be forced to liqu...

Thanks pp4me! That's virtually identical to what I'm doing. I'm still saving and not drawing down of course, but the asset distribution among accounts should be the same. Main difference is that when I retire, I'll dump out all my 401K/403b accounts into a single IRA so that I have full control over...

I would do what I'm already doing: pack the tax-deferred accounts with cash, gold and bonds. These are the assets that are likely to gain the least over time. use tax-exempt (Roth and HSA) for stocks. I put some gold in here also. In taxable you want stocks, savings bonds, and "deep" physi...

Tipswatch has announced that the new variable component of I-bonds will reset to 3.54% on May 1, 2021. Even if the new fixed rate is announced as 0%, that means that the composite rate for the next six months of I-bonds is guaranteed to be at least 3.54%. 1. If you have not yet purchased your quota...