This phenomenon is fascinating in and of itself, but the main reason I mention it is because I recently learned that the hexagram symbol has historically been associated with the planet Saturn since ancient times. Also, the religion of Judaism has also long been associated somewhat with the planet ...

Land of the free! Or... not.

Is it possible he never heard of HB?  I can't imagine anyone writing this article while knowing HBs investment philosophy. It's not impossible that he would independently come up with the same idea as Browne and then backtest it over the same period as we see here.  It's just really suspicious.  I ...

Great article.

Insofar as language is a tool of thought, I think that imprecision in language tends to be associated with imprecision in thought.

it might explain why so many civilizations and cultures across the globe have had eerily similar myths over the ages: You might check out Carl Jung and the COLLECTIVE unconscious for more thoughts on this. Yes, definitely. I've read some of Jung's work. He was heavily influenced by the occult, so h...

And it just so happens that Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun! Good point! So the plot thickens. Uh, guys... You gotta watch this: http://youtu.be/ZI2BxAq8jY8 Coincidence? Interesting... in part 2 of that video, they show how the hexagram has been historically associated with beer brewing and...

Do you give an credence to the possibility of the planets containing a sort of advanced consciousness?  Maybe the hexagonal symbol was presented through a dream or vision and then incorporated into religions and other symbolism.  Saturn is trying to get our attention. That's entirely possible! But ...

As MT says, the world is a wonderful and mysterious place and it is almost certainly some natural phenomena.  I'm much more concerned about the aliens running our country (aliens being a generic term for turkeys in both parties) than that the phenomena is something other than natural. I'm fairly su...

I'm going out on a limb by posting this topic, but since we've already discussed various fringe topics like the mystery of the Pyramids at Giza , I'll go ahead and do it. I'm not sure how many of you are aware of this, but a giant vortex in the shape of a well-defined hexagon has existed at Saturn's...

Many/most college professors are far left liberals who only believe in free speech if it agrees with them.  In some ways colleges indoctrinate students into these beliefs, which is perhaps partly why the country...is as it is. This was exactly my college experience. My profs were stuck in the 60s, ...

Thanks for sharing your journey with us, Hobbery! Your own transition from anxious doomer to calm PPer closely resembles the one that I went through a couple of years ago when I first stumbled across the PP in a blog post on LewRockwell.com. Regarding your comment that what we think we believe is of...

I'd be interested to hear feedback on this recent podcast I did on milestones to financial freedom. You can hear the podcast here http://thevoluntarylife.com/TVL_E080_financial_freedom_milestones.mp3 and I've posted a summary of all the main points below from the accompanying blog post http://thevo...

What I don't understand about other methods such as ... buying the lagging asset is that they seem to work against the way a PP is supposed to function.  Unless I'm missing something, buying the lagging asset would prevent rebalance events that force you to sell high and buy low.  Essentially you'r...

These current secession rumblings are clearly kind of silly, but I see them as just the tip of a very large iceberg. As U.S. whites of European ancestry continue their trajectory toward becoming a minority, expect the secession issue to become larger and more heated. Although the mainstream media do...

Before making any sweeping generalizations based on observations of crime in California, first watch what happens to crime in Washington and Colorado. They both legalized recreational marijuana use in this past election. If Washington and Colorado crime levels remain fairly constant, that may be evi...

I kind of doubt that folks will be favoring LTTs over cash when yields are near zero. But, let's say that yields do bounce around between 1 and 2, how often would you reach rebalancing bands? It all depends on what the rest of the portfolio is doing. If everything else zigs when LTTs zag, then LTT ...

My understanding is that volatility is roughly gold > stocks > LTT >>> cash. If so, this would explain why we want to maximize volatility of the LTT asset. Is this correct, everyone? Your ranking of the asset volatilities above is correct, but I wouldn't say you want to "maximize" volatil...

Jimbo, I went back and looked at my calculations more closely, and it actually looks like the relationship between duration and volatility (defined a couple of different ways) is much weaker than I initially thought. I compared the duration to (1) the annualized standard deviation of the bond price ...

Another potential argument against transitioning from LTTs to cash as yields approach zero is the possibility that yields will bounce back and forth between 0% and 2% for decades. Cash wouldn't benefit much from a decades-long ping-pong match between 0% and 2%. But LTTs would, because you'd be captu...

Okay, so you guys seem to be arguing that microeconomics is effectively "me economics." I.e., economics that only looks at one side of every transaction--the "me" side. I disagree. In microeconomics it's definitely acknowledged that there are two sides to every transaction. It's ...

Example of micro versus macro... In a micro model spent money disappears. It's as if money is consumed. A macro model tracks takes a stock flow consistent approach, seeing spending as a flow and then it tabulating where it accumulates as a stock. I've never seen micro presented that way. In micro, ...

MediumTex wrote: It's amazing how few people understand the bond market, even investors who have been at it for a long time.

That's because understanding how bonds work requires knowing a little bit of math. And few people know math beyond arithmetic.

Here's my follow up question - for someone like me who not only has bought the bonds themselves but who also owns a fairly nice chunk of EDV, do you know how the volatility of EDV compares to the different durations (30 vs. 25 vs. 20 yrs) of bonds? I'm just curious, because I'm struggling with how ...

It's fine to say that some countries might be better at managing their finances under a certain monetary system, but its naive to assume that those countries will follow the rules of that system. I agree. That's why governments shouldn't issue money. It should be issued by competing private busines...

Wow... I thought my previous post would generate at least a little discussion, but I guess not. It was a surprising discovery for me, and I'm wondering why nobody else seems to be very surprised by it. Maybe most folks on this forum invest in TLT rather than buying T-bonds directly. I think I'll be ...