It's not 25% "Cash" but "Cash AND cash-like instruments"..  i.e. Cash, CDs, money market funds, short-term bonds, Dollar index, etc.

I guess if you have a lot of free time and you'd like to start your own fund (with clients) in the future this may be a suitable route. Use the CFA designation to attract clients then just rebalance once in a blue moon. Unfortunately, it's a catch 22..  you'll need the CFA to attract clients to your...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/45474748

I'm confident PP might see better returns but still likely in for a disappointment in the coming years..

Look at UUP or the dollar index during the period when the Permanent Portfolio assets all declined in tandem..

Super interesting!  Thanks once again for the update. I've also been tracking a "Leveraged PP" and a "Leveraged Super PP" (3x33 of the leveraged ETFs, discarding cash.) I established both portfolios on January 25, 2011.  The "Leveraged PP" (4x25) has so far returned 14...

Another idea to keep in mind is that leverage is normally an expression of maximum optimism in a certain approach to investing. We know from history that periods of maximum optimism are often followed by periods of sub-par performance.  If too many people start talking about using leverage with the...

What is the tracking error like for UUP at those critical moments when you need it most? It is all very well having great tracking acuracy for the 99.9% of the time when it is just a drag on the portfolio. What matters is the lack of tracking error for the darkest hour when the margin calls come in...

I suppose the formula has inbuilt assumptions about how to extrapolate what the chances are of a meltdown event given the standard deviation. Its well documented  that supposed "three sigma events" actually happen quite often in real markets. The distributions are way off a normal distrib...

Since Harry Browne didn't like leverage, is this a crazy idea?  I probably won't go 8x leverage..  I'm already at 3x leverage and up about 10-15% on the year after starting the permanent portfolio in August 2011. The fastest way I've seen people lose everything they have in investing is by using le...

MediumTex wrote: I would stay away from leverage with the PP.

Maybe treat the leveraged portion of your PP as your VP.

I'm not really investing using "Permanent Portfolio" as my core strategy..  just stealing some ideas from PP...

I'm studying Quant Trading and the idea of using the Kelly Criteria to determine how much to leverage a portfolio.  (See: http://epchan.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-much-leverage-should-you-use.html )  This formula calculates the most optimal amount of leverage for a portfolio to grow steadily.. I'll cu...