Ad Orientem has a point. Eurozone governments have no easy access to money printing and thus can default on their debts. I doubt Germany would do that however, so buying German bonds might be a good move. Personally I chose to use a government saving account for the cash component, because that's th...

As I see it from Europe, but not from Greece itself : Greece is in a highly deflationist spiral where people face more & more salary cuts, year after year, and there are less and less public services available. People earn less & less and the police is more & more inefficient as there ar...

Actually, one internet operator here in France fought to propose a very cheap internet + TV + phone offer. Before they arrive on the market, it was typical to pay 60 € for internet + 25 € for TV + 50 € for the non-mobile phone. Then they came in with their own telecom infrastructure and modems and p...

Here in France, the situation is quite the opposite : you better keep your cash on special, government-backed saving account rather than buy short-term treasuries ; In a way, Savings Bonds and directly-held Treasuries are really just government-backed savings accounts. But, few people think of them...

Thank you all. Clive, I like your approach. It reminds me of Taleb's advice : keep as much as possible in the safest assets, and a little of very risky, very volatile assets. Well, I don't really like leveraged assets, but using a small caps ETF is quite interesting in this regard. As for risks in E...

OK, thanks. And do you think having, say, a Russel 2000 & a SP500 ETF (to profit a little more from volatility) is worth the added rebalancing "work" it implies ? (knowing that rebalancing is free of taxes & broker fees on my contract)

What if the broker holding your treasuries goes bankrupt ? Can you get your cash back easily ? (cf MF Global, whose clients discovered their assets were actually not theirs anymore...) Here in France, the situation is quite the opposite : you better keep your cash on special, government-backed savin...

Hello, one thing is worrying me with the easy, simple approach involving the use of one ETF for the stocks portion of the PP. What if the ETF seller goes bankrupt with my money ? That's a 25% loss over the entire portfolio, that's a lot to lose for a "fail-safe", low volatility portfolio. ...

Thank you all ! A lot of food for thought... Well I'm taking your advice for German bonds, I was thinking about it already (even if foreign bonds are rather hard to buy, here ; it looks like banks try to prevent you from doing this as they prefer selling their own packages). Actually, that's what I ...

Hello, I'm from Europe, France more exactly, and I'm rather interested in the PP as it contains sound ideas. However, as it is designed, I think it only works in the US, or probably a few other countries, but is far from being universal, for a few reasons. Well, maybe I'm wrong, but I'd like to know...