@LC475: I understand what you are saying regarding Gold's 'world price' not necessarily being affected, however your Zimbabwe scenario showed that even a Zimbabwe-PP would have done somewhat better than any other Zimbabwe-only investment strategies due to holding gold. I'll have to think about what ...

We have reason to think that gold won't work so great as an inflation hedge for India because the Indian rupee is not the reserve currency of the world, nor even a very major currency.  So if the rupee crashes, gold will not necessarily skyrocket much, if at all. Can you explain this? My understand...

At the risk of being accused of market timing, it may not be a bad idea to take the funds you've allocated for a Permanent Portfolio and ease in, perhaps over 3 or 4 quarters (in 33% or 25% increments). Of course it's a good idea to dollar cost average into a set of new investments, even if "T...

Would I do better just buying TLT? I wouldn't try to buy individual bonds in a 401(k) account.  It can probably be done, but TLT should work fine for now. I buy individual bonds directly in my Fidelity 401(k) through their brokerage window (BrokerageLink) commission free. It's actually quite easy a...

I use it and I know a few others who do as well. Here's my two second review: Upside: Free Trades :) Each app update adds new features (recently added Stop order types) Downside: Very low on features. All researching of instruments should be done outside of the app. Only use the app for the purchase...

I don't remember who posted it, but somebody in this forum said something I found very insightful regarding the value of cash. Cash doesn't just help reduce portfolio volatility, but it really helps with life volatility (their phrase, not mine). Consider the financial crash in 2008. Someone investin...

For everyone's information these are the approximate duration values given by Fidelity for bonds of different maturity: 20yrs- 14.6 25yrs- 16.4 30yrs- 20.8 Obviously there is more 'juice' (volatility) in the longer maturity bonds. But that still doesn't really help us determine what is best for the ...

My Fidelity 401k and Vanguard Roth IRA have commission free trading for US Treasuries. I'm also curious if keeping the maturity between 25-30 years makes any difference vs. 20-30.

2nd Grade explanation: You buy a toy for $5. A little while later, the toy is worth $10 so you decide to sell it. You have made $5 in profit which you can now use to buy other toys.

Now realize toys = gold and profit = capital appreciation

Hope that helps

Just a heads up, according to peaktotrough, the PP has only had a DD above 10% six times since 1972. So if you are waiting for the PP to crash before buying in, you might have to wait a while. Compared to most conventional investing strategies, losing a few % here and there is not really a big deal....

This statement confuses me. How can you think Stocks are a bad investment because they have kept going up AND Gold is a bad investment because it has kept going down? For stock, since it's been going straight up for 5 years since the crash (look at the charts) without a 10% correction, which is tot...

You probably have 'Reinvest Div/Int' set to NO. All dividends get put into Cash (T-Bills) and then get added to your total returns.

I have been watching the HBPP portfolio for over 6 months because I am still not convinced due to the current environment.  stock is sky high - waiting to dive back down to earth, back to dotcom bubble territory, not more than 10% correction over 5 years ... gold - is still on the slippery slope, h...

If the US government defaults on it's debt, wouldn't that make the dollar worthless? I'd assume if the entity that can print it's own money defaults, corporate bonds would fair much worse. Besides, if the US government defaults, dollar goes down (hyperinflation), wouldn't gold (priced in dollars) sa...

Why use Berkshire Hathaway? In your opinion, what advantage is there in using it over a general stock index for the PP?

I think there is a problem with Google Spreasheet in general. Both importhtml() and =GOOGLEFINANCE(xxx, "price") calls have been pretty inconsistent for me.

Not sure there's anything we can do about it.

I am currently using a directly held short term treasury ladder (maturity 1-3 years) for a portion of my cash. When purchasing new treasuries, once I choose the maturity date, should I just try to pick the one with the highest 'Ask Yield to Worst'? For example, for treasuries maturing on 11/30/2016,...

You're right, it does appear to be intermittent; I just reloaded my spreadsheet and it is working correctly (currently using "http://"). Maybe it's not a huge issue, I've only had it happen during the past few days.

Thanks fnord!

Hi All, I have been using the code in fnord123's post to track my I-Bonds in Google Spreasheets. This has been working fine, but in the past couple days, it has stopped working and just returns #VALUE (error: The data could not be retrieved. Please check the URL.) Is anyone else having the same issu...

I know I am a new member here and I spend more time reading the posts than I do commenting, but I'd also be interested to see the data with the 25% Max DD for the PP. I chose the PP due to it's low overall volatility and think this information would be interesting. I know LC475 is being a bit rough,...

Okay, that sounds reasonable to me since we agree that a stock tilt is a bet on prosperity :) If someone doesn't mind making that bet and also can guarantee that they won't have to touch the money for a sufficiently long time (this is a loaded statement since there could be a multi-decade stock mark...

PointedStick, I get what you're saying that the PP will lag the Stock Market during times of prosperity. But to say that over a long time horizon, one would be better off putting more money in stocks is the equivalent of saying that one should expect prosperity in the long term. If that is the case,...

My solution has been to add new funds to the 'Cash' bucket. Whenever I hit a rebalancing band (i.e. Cash reaches 35% of the total PP size), I use the excess cash to purchase the other asset (Stocks, Bonds, Gold). This keeps transactions down to only a few times per year and will become less frequent...

I don't understand the responses saying that a 'stock heavy' portfolio is appropriate for anyone in the accumulation phase (young investors). Hasn't the PP historically done about as well as a 100% stock portfolio with significantly lower volatility and much smaller drawdowns? In what way would a st...

Thanks for your help everybody! I have (pretty much) built my PP. I have ordered half of the gold portion and will wait to receive it before ordering the second half. Cash is in an I-Bond; I will put the rest in short-term treasuries once I'm done with my gold purchases. Stock portion is invested in...