As Craig mentions above, Also be aware that the optimum asset allocation based on a backtest is going to change each year as the markets move and is highly time dependent. What is the optimum allocation today won't be the same one five years from now. Optimizing your current portfolio based on even ...

Rather than treat this as a single total portfolio and rebalance each year as you suggest, I think a better idea would be to explicitly treat this as two portfolios - a 4x25 PP that starts with 40% and an all stock VP with 60% - and then transfer money from the 60% stock portfolio (one-way) into the...

I bring it up only since you don't mention it, but something else you might consider is GTU, which is a closed end fund that holds allocated, unencumbered, audited gold.  It definitely has its own issues (discussed in other threads here and the giant bogleheads thread), but avoids the custodian issu...

This might be a very amateur question...but what is better, VTSMX or VTI?  Or, more generally, are index funds or ETFs better? Many people only look at the difference in the management fees and conclude the ETF is "better" (ever so slightly cheaper).  A better question is -  how are they ...

I'm thinking about an allocation that might be appropriate for a highly risk averse 80+ year old.  The main goal is capital preservation as opposed to capital appreciation.  For example, the prospect of a 10-15% decline is really not very acceptable.  Clive has suggested volatility can be reduced by...

The ETFs erode over time due to their ongoing expenses (about .4%/year - which they pay by taking that much gold from you).  So if the price started exactly at 1/10th of 1 oz of gold, after a year the price would be only .0996 of an ounce of gold.  Another way to put this is if you start with 1000 1...

I think Simata is asking about the worst total draw down, from a daily high to a subsequent daily low (not just in a single day).  Perhaps this would be a peak in 2008 to some subsequent low.  For comparison the S&P index dropped about 55% from its peak on about 10 Oct 2008 to its subsequent low...

The premium over NAV is something I'm not used to seeing and still trying to get my head around. Do others equate this with basically the dealer mark-up of physical bullion? Is that the best way to value whether the premium is fair or not? The premium (or, theoretically, discount) for GTU is simply...

it just strikes me as a maze of potential problems compared to direct ownership. I definitely agree if the comparison is to buying gold coins.  However, if the goal is to keep some portion of your gold holdings in an offshore location it's not clear to me the risks are tremendously different from o...

Anyone have any experience with http://goldmoney.com/ ?  I know the basics, i.e. it's effectively an offshore bank (foreign account for US taxpayers) in which you can deposit money and then convert the money into gold (pooled).  There's a sliding fee charged to convert into gold (a premium over spot...

The time to buy GTU is when the premium is down, which happens due to normal market forces and also right after additional shares are created (if you look at the news history, the last time this happened was May 12, 2009).  One way to look at it is the premium (more or less) corresponds to the marku...

I don't know much about Perth (maybe someone else can comment). GTU is a Canadian trust available as a closed end fund run by the same folks who run CEF (which was founded in 1961).  CEF is a 60/40 gold/silver mix while GTU is strictly gold.  Since these are closed end funds, the current price might...