MG, I'm not sure I understand the application of duration outside of bonds. Standard deviation has its flaws (and is a moving target) but I think it's the best we have. D1984, I am not a fan of the x3 (or x2) products. They are designed to be trading vehicles and the products' own prospectuses warn ...

Work has finally slowed down so I had some time to do some thinking and number crunching. I made a post here you guys might find interesting: http://www.stableinvesting.com/2014/11/november-26-2014-bond-duration-as.html?m=1 I think that the PPs core drivers can be exploited at varying levels of risk...

The economic framework of that quadrant is exactly how the PP was designed. Bridgewater (the largest hedge fund group in the world) produced that specific chart, and they follow the same underlying philosophy as the PP for their All Weather fund. Harry Browne's description of 4 environments is somew...

The vanguard target retirement income fund is great. I love that they added hedged international bonds. You own a little bit of everything with that fund and at an extremely reasonable expense ratio. The only way to get burned with that fund is through a bad inflation or abandoning ship to chase so...

The vanguard target retirement income fund is great. I love that they added hedged international bonds. You own a little bit of everything with that fund and at an extremely reasonable expense ratio. The only way to get burned with that fund is through a bad inflation or abandoning ship to chase som...

Treasuries rising after their downgrade is actually an extremely simple and logical response. Smart money knows that Treasuries are risk free in nominal terms and prices them primarily off of inflation and growth expectations. When Treasuries got downgraded it had no impact on their credit risk (bec...

Why not just use the % change in a price index to determine inflation? By definition inflation is a broad change in prices.

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes time and annoys the pig"

I feel like I should tattoo this inside of my eyelids.

Yeah things are looking up Thanks guys.

Just level one.

Like a coward I didn't respond to this thread until I knew if I passed. But yes!

Sometimes I don't like reading the political views that are expressed here, and sometimes the Boglehead's moderating stifles interesting discussions.

I like having both options.

I am going through a rough part of my life, and the PP is the last thing on my mind. If you find yourself pre-occupied with the PP's recent lackluster performance, do yourself a favor and focus on bigger and better things. Life may be passing you by.

That is all.

I have always thought that fair value is a term more often used when one is practicing value investing. The PP is definitely not a value strategy, so if you are actually trying to do the PP I would just follow rebalancing bands.

I really think this can be best thought of as "tight money." Of course, it's not actually tight money but more appropriately "tighter than expected" money. Historically the PP has not responded well to tighter than expected monetary policy, most notably in 1981, so i don't think ...

When you started the PP, were you aware that 20% drawdowns are possible with the PP? My guess is that you lost about 5-6% so far. Try to imagine losing 20%, if you can't handle that you should invest in a more conservative, less volatile strategy. I think a common occurrence is that people buy into...

New location for me. Hoboken, NJ. I got a job in Jersey City. If anyone wants to grab drinks in NYC sometime let me know 

I really think that the pure expectations hypothesis is a great way to think about the long end of the curve. Under that model, the long end of the curve is best thought of as the geometric average of expected short term rates over the given period. That means that when yields spike on the end of t...

I really think that the pure expectations hypothesis is a great way to think about the long end of the curve. Under that model, the long end of the curve is best thought of as the geometric average of expected short term rates over the given period. That means that when yields spike on the end of th...

Fradika, your portfolio seems very reasonable. I think that having meaningful exposure to stocks, bonds, and some type of commodity/gold (not the producers but the actual 'thing') gets you 90% of the way there.  I am curious why you decided to go with some long dollar exposure. Would you mind sharin...

Everyone should also keep in mind that historically the PP has had 2 drawdowns where in real terms the portfolio was down over 20%. That doesn't show up in the annual data, you have to look intra year for that. If something has already happened in the past, you should be ready for it to happen again...

You are simply making sh*t up. It certainly does feel like that at times! Definitely not making it up. You can read more about the history of money in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Modern-Money-Employment-Stability/dp/1845429419/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371139089&sr=8-1&...

I think a lot of people bought into gold on misguided inflation expectations. I think the market is still learning what QE does and doesn't do.

Today's inflation data was incredibly weak:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-1 ... onomy.html

I think it will be interesting to see how the current societal structure holds up with the rising inequality. Democracy = one person, one vote Capitalism- one dollar, one vote As the upper echelon of the capitalist class get richer and richer the contradictions of living in democractic/capitalist so...

An interesting historical phenomenon is that in Europe different gold coins, with the same weight in gold, traded at different values in the free market. They traded at different premiums to their metallic content. This flys in the face of the idea that gold was the determinant of the currencies val...