That's interesting - I'm not sure I'd agree that it's just human nature to be greedy. It does seem to be a major factor in this country, and it's sort of supported/promoted by our culture.  As far as systemic changes, the Taft-Hartley Act seems to have been a strong cause of the decline of unions, w...

I'd say greed and the diversion of gains to those at the top are a major factor. The average CEO in the 50's made about 30-50x an average employee, and today they make about 200x as much. If there were an index fund with lower costs that tracked the best companies to work for, that would be interest...

I'm sure that's true, and it would definitely be a concern. And, yes, you're right about the secondary market in that way - the thing I like about PARWX is that I'd be benefiting from companies that offer "outstanding workplaces", rather than ones that s***w their employees to do well.  I'...

Thanks for looking at it sophie. You could be right that the tech sector has done well for the reasons you give, of course.  I'm not good at analyzing things like that.  But if you look at the annual returns, they follow the general trend of the total market, just a bit better here and there, and th...

Thanks - I appreciate that. Being risk/loss averse as I am, any investment strategy makes me a bit nervous.  That's why I wouldn't use it for meeting any financial needs, just for fun.  One idea I've had is to donate gains in the portfolio to charities - the easy way to do that would be to take any ...

Maybe I should make that my forum name  :D Thanks - it's not a big deal for me, since I'm not even invested in my idea yet.  We just got an IRA out of all markets and into a money market, and will do the same with our other smaller one, as we're about a year out from retirement. It's been fun resear...

Maybe that's it.

I also found his comments odd, and generally missing the point of the PP.

I understand that - I was just saying that PARWX looks like a good substitute for VTSAX to me, and matches HB's original idea for the stock part of the PP.  In my earlier posts, I called my idea a "boglehead/PP" hybrid - it uses the simple two fund approach of bogleheads, with the PP idea ...

 

I did think my posts were substantially better in terms of grammar/punctuation/etc. than his.

How do you edit a post on here after posting it?  I've been posting one after another because I didn't see how to do that.

Wait, I just figured it out!

In other online forums that I've participated in, moderators can look at members' ip addresses.

If they promise not to use/share that information in any other way, they have my permission to look at it, compare it with mathjak's, and report back to the forum that they're not the same.

I would gladly do that, except for privacy concerns. What else would convince you?  It's odd to me, since I have very different views than he did, and a much more positive take on the PP.  In fact, I probably understated how exciting it was for me to come across it, and how it spurred a lot of resea...

Thanks. I get some of that, but some of it is still a bit murky for me - there have been a number of threads that questioned gold's relationship to some of those. If I understood it right, HB's idea was that gold would protect against hyperinflation or shtf scenarios - I'm pretty sure we won't have ...

I swear on a Bible, or whatever book you want, that I am not mathjak (sp?)! And, I don't share his view of the PP, or his tendencies towards active trading/market timing in the least.  I'm very risk/loss averse, and willingly would trade off some return for lower volatility. Gold is a bit confusing ...

I'm not sure how you got the 1.45% figure (I don't know how to calculate distributions exactly and their effect on taxes), but let's assume it's correct. It would apply to half of the portfolio, so the net decrease would be about .75%, which would bring the CAGR down to about 9%, still quite respect...

VTSAX lost 36.99% in 2008.

Wouldn't those happen in any stock fund? So, if I had VTSAX instead, I'd pay similar taxes, right?  Although, according to Morningstar, the distributions from VTSAX look like dividend income, where the ones from PARWX are a mix of long-term capital gains and dividends.  Historically, I believe that ...

According to a cagr calculator I found, the cagr of the portfolio would be 9.79%, which sounds very decent to me, considering the safety of the portfolio.

Ok. So, I ran them again, from 2006, using the 60/40 bands and subtracting the fees from each segment each year. At the end of the ten year period, $10,000 would have grown to $25,603, which translates to an average annual yield on the original investment of 15.456%.  I don't know how to get a CAGR ...

Correction - the fees would only be on half of the portfolio, so they'd be lower than that.

I may run the numbers again, with the 60/40 re-balancing, and take the fees out, and re-calculate things - it's just a little tedious, but shouldn't be that hard.

Yes, the fees grow with the investments - I do understand that.  But I wouldn't be likely to have a lot invested in my portfolio, or depending on it for income - it would just be for fun.  So, even if one got up to a $50,000 total, that would only be $500/yr in fees. And, as I said, I like the selec...

Also, you have to compare apples to apples. Comparing results of a very active investment that requires frequent trading/market timing, and invests in higher risk assets with the PP isn't doing that. And, there's a lot of personal subjective stuff involved in making the judgement about what's "...

Also, other possible downsides like storage, finding a reliable dealer/testing coins, etc.  But I didn't mean to pick on gold, I just used it as an example of downsides to investment choices.  People who invest in gold undoubtedly feel that the upsides outweigh the downsides. So, for me, the upside ...

Thanks! It's designed to invest in companies that are good to their employees, and I like that a lot. All of your comments about actively managed funds are spot on, as far as I can tell, and the expense ratio is a bit high.  But, then again, with gold you pay over spot price initially+sales tax when...

I mean that it hasn't had a single down year over that period.

And, if you re-balance annually, but only with 60/40 bands, you can do even better, but portfolio visualizer won't let you try that option.

Hello to all! I've been reading/lurking for some time now, and this is my first post.  I'd like to offer my summary of what I've seen (hope it's respectful enough to long-time users). Most of the criticisms/complaints about the PP seem to be based on a misunderstanding of what it's supposed to do, a...