Interest rates are probably going to rise soon, or at least stop falling. How long have we been hearing that? It sounds like your crystal ball is a lot clearer than mine. Could you please give us a date fixed? Have you seen where long-bond yields are at in other countries? Is there some reason that...

Thank you for the welcome, Sophie. On withdrawal rates: "it is reasonable to expect a Permanent Portfolio to earn, over a period of years, an average yearly return of at least 5% above the inflation rate", Harry Browne wrote in Why the Best-Laid Investment Plans Usually Go Wrong . In a foo...

I did a backtest comparison of the PP, comparing it to a portfolio where ITTs replace LTTs. Results from Portfolio Visualizer. In a backtest period 1981-2016 , a (standard) PP with 25% long-term treasuries beats a PP with 25% intermediate-term treasuries. CAGRs: with 25% LTTs: 7.41% with 25% ITTs: 6...

Thanks for checking in, Alanw. We don't hear much from the satisfied PP users! How did you decided on adding the 20-30% VWINX? Just looking for a bit more income overall? Yes it would be great to hear from other satisfied (or even unsatisfied) users, particularly those who have an long-established ...

You miss a lot of the picture if you look at returns over that time period. Look at individual years where the PP would have sustained outsized losses without the LTT exposure. It's difficult to stick to the plan if one is concerned with volatility on an annual basis. Another thing that usually get...

I personally would not rebalance if the transaction resulted in any taxes. Some investors have tighter rebalance bands and others don't rebalance at all. Thanks budd. I will probably avoid taxes by not selling anything as you suggest, and try to pluck up the courage to buy bonds with remaining cash...

Because of having moved to Euroland for work, I have accumulated share accounts in sterling and in Euros. I have a Euro PP and a speculative sterling VP, as well as a high-yield portfolio of US, UK and Euro shares. The HY port does all right, mainly because I don't trade in it. I would like to event...

barrett Thanks for the info. Peaktotrough offers different rebalancing options, which may explain the difference from Portfolio Visualizer. Yes, the long bond added 0.5% more CAGR to the portfolio since 2000. But for the 25 previous years, the CAGRs of portfolios with 30y PP and 10y PP were virtuall...

dualstow Yes, the European long bonds also performed well recently as in the US. My Euro long bond ETF (MTF.PA from Lyxor) is still showing a 25% profit despite being 12% off its recent high. In Europe we don't have the same range of analytical tools for Euro ETFs and funds, so all my backtests refe...

This is the common "bullet vs. barbell" debate. Both seem to work OK if you are just looking at CAGR, but I believe that the cash portion of the barbell offers certain advantages. For example, if you include all your assets in your PP and you have a cash position of 25% (or whatever), tha...

Long bonds in the PP worked very well in recent years in countering market dips. I am still reluctant to add to my long bonds at the moment because of the risk of rising rates. I did a comparison of two PPs in Portfolio Visualizer, a conventional PP with long bonds and another with intermediate bond...

I have a dilemma a bit like duchtraffic's earlier on in the thread. I am in Euroland and have a Euro PP and a VP, as well as a high-yield portfolio. Now that I am retired, I have finally accepted that I am not good at speculation. I want to abandon the VP and include its contents in the PP where pos...

From the PP, withdrawing is straightforward: the cash reserve is built in. The subject of withdrawals from the PP has been discussed several times in this forum, notably in a thread that is unfortunately in the "Other Discussions" section: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/other-discuss...

Thanks MG. I considered VT but its composition is not unlike what I have at the moment. From Vanguard's site, VT composition is (my figures in parentheses):   9.40% Emerging Markets (12%)   22.10% Europe (24%)   14.20% Pacific (26%)   0.20% Middle East (0%)   54.10% North America (38%) So again not ...

I am a Euro investor and am converting some existing holdings to a PP. At present I hold the following Euro stock ETFs, all traded in Paris, in the following percentages of the stock component of the portfolio: CEU: MSCI Europe 24% SP5: S&P 500 12% TPXH: Japan hedged in Euros 26% UST: Nasdaq 26%...

Some Euro figures:

IMEU Euro shares +8.3%
IBGL Euro 15-30y bonds +26.6%
GBS Gold +1.5%
IBGS Euro 1-3y bonds +1.8%

Average = 9.6%, very close to USA figure.

Frugal My mistake. I have corrected my earlier post where I had mistakenly used my "since inception" figure instead of my 2013 figure. My PP lost about 3% in 2013, thanks to gold's losing over 25%. Your figure of +5% over two years is right, giving a CAGR of less than 2.5% over the two yea...

ILoveMoney Thanks for the reply. I agree with you about currency swings - I have been caught in the past with a sterling drop against the Euro. To answer your question: for a US stocks fund like an SP500 fund, I would not bother hedging as it would be only part of my equity section, and I can just a...

Frugal My Euro PP (IMEU, IBGL, PHGP, IBGS) is up 8.4% this calendar year.  Did well in the last few weeks: it was a lot less (5.5% for this year) last month. [Revision 24.11.14: It was down about 3% in 2013. That fits with your figure of 5% over two years.] Year-to-date figures from Boursorama.com: ...

Frugal
For Euro REITs, there is also EEP and C8R.
Tarentola

I am sure there are others here better qualified to reply but here goes. Commodities, particularly precious metals, are considered a store of absolute value. For example, if the dollar fell relative to the euro, the price of silver in dollars would rise. The price of silver in euros would not change...

Silver and other commodities are formally priced in dollars but are largely currency-independent. For US bonds, there will of course be currency risk, and as a Euro investor I would invest only a small percentage of my bond allocation in them.

Frugal If you compare the performances of VDMIX and VEIEX over the last 10 years (on Yahoo for example) you will see that there is some correlation, but  VEIEX has done a lot better (+150% to -5%) and is more volatile. I do not see what benefit VDMIX would add, and I would replace it by another asse...

Thanks for the replies and sorry for the lateness of this reply, due to travelling. There is a 2009 study “Strategic Asset Allocation: Determining the Optimal Portfolio with Ten Asset Classes”? (Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1368689).  The authors attempt to evaluate which a...

Craig In the context of the Variable Portfolio discussion http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/http://77.104.139.218/~gyroscop/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=3 : apart from the four PP assets, what would you say are the major investable classes in the market that are worth considering?  I can think of REIT,...