Pardon the intrusion, but I didn't have time to read all 17 pages of posts in this thread.  I dusted off my PP historical performance spreadsheet and wanted to share some food for thought.  (Note:  the numbers below assume you bought a PP on 1/1 of each year and held it without rebalancing until 1/1...

I kind of lobbed that article out there to see what everyone thought of it without actually saying what I thought of it myself!  In a nutshell, it doesn't make me want to change my overall investing plan.  Very few things do these days... and I read a lot about different approaches to investing. I p...

So sayeth Seeking Alpha:

http://www.seekingalpha.com/article/332 ... dead?ifp=0

Hi kids!  Long time no post.  Saw this and wanted to share: Gold Funds Compared By Efficiency, Physical Redemption And Audit Policy Executive summary: "GLD is the best choice for short term traders but has a high decay rate, IAU for long-term holders, and PHYS has the best redemption and auditi...

Personally, I'd always aim to keep things as balanced as possible.  So $10K in new cash would get invested in such a way as to even out my investments (assuming there are no transaction costs).  Same for withdrawals, where I'd skim more from the best performing assets than from the worst performers,...

There seems to be something suspicious with this site.  Mine came out to 98, as with most of the rest of you. Seems fishy to me. 

EDIT: you have to give an email address at the end. Know that before you start. Well, yes.  The key word there is "an" e-mail address, as opposed to "your" e-mail address.  Take a look at e4ward.com.  I've been using them to anonymize my "real" e-mail address for many ...

I'm with the others:  I put new money and dividends into cash until I'm ready to deploy the funds.  This cuts down on transactions and commissions and makes my life easier*.  It also forces me to pick the "best" (cheapest) asset when it's time to invest those funds.  * My wife works for a ...

I have to confess. I couldn't stop myself. Last week I reduced my stock exposure to 9%, bonds to 14%, gold up to 30% and the rest in cash. I guess I'll ask the obvious question:  why did you do this with your PP instead of your VP?  This, of course, is assuming you're not already 100% PP.  The reas...

Hey there PP investors! :D Yes, I've been totally AWOL for a while now, but circumstances have prevented me from even logging in, let alone posting to the PP forums (i.e. work restrictions).  But I saw this article and wanted to share: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/your-money/who-routinely-troun...

Great article from The Economist:

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/ ... nvest-food

Rick Ferri may be a smart guy but when it comes to gold he has a major blind spot. So I take anything he says with several grains of salt. Lots of otherwise experienced and intelligent people have blind spots in regards to gold.  Here are a few of them: "Gold is a speculation.  It has absolute...

Not that this impacts someone who's purely PP, but I recently read a controversial article titled "Reducing Retirement Risk with a Rising Equity Glide-Path" that makes the argument that retirees should gradually increase their equity positions over time.  This goes against the traditional ...

A mere $10,000 holding would cost an additional $14/year in expenses if held in Schwab's commission free SGOL vs paying the commission and buying IAU. If you have more than 10k to invest in gold ETFs, find a place with low commissions and buy the ETF with the lower expense ratio. True, but you can ...

Harry Browne Permanent Portfolio http://www.myplaniq.com/LTISystem/jsp/portfolio/ViewPortfolio.action?ID=17551 Harry Browne Permanent Portfolio Without Cash http://www.myplaniq.com/LTISystem/jsp/portfolio/ViewPortfolio.action?ID=38351 That's pretty much what I would have expected to see:  increased...

You're not restricted from owning both VWINX and VWELX, don't forget.  You can mix and match them to get the blend you want: heavier on VWELX while you're young, then gradually shifting more and more into VWINX as retirement approaches.  Just a thought. 

Personally, I keep 6 months emergency cash outside my investment accounts, and very little cash inside my investment accounts (5%-10%).  So I don't view the cash sitting in a checking account as being part of my PP.  I don't go 25% cash in my PP because of its weak long-term performance.  I have 15-...

During the accumulation phase, "max draw down" refers to the maximum loss a portfolio or other investment might suffer over some period of time.  Investopedia explains it as follows: Definition of 'Drawdown' The peak-to-trough decline during a specific record period of an investment, fund ...

You might also look at VWELX.  Not so much for the cash portion of the PP, but for your VP or in a 401k or other retirement account where you can't replicate a PP.  Larger allocation to stocks than VWINX, with slightly higher returns over time.  Both are good "set it and forget it" funds, ...

I think that the PP book has probably caused a lot of people to go back and read Harry Browne's books as well, which is a really good thing.  Browne had a lot of insightful things to say about investing and the world in general. I recently purchased a (used) copy of each of HB's books on investing....

Hard assets tend to do well during inflation, like oil (OIL, DBO), real estate (VNQ, VNQI), agriculture (DBA, MOO), and commodities (DBC, USCI).  Stocks also tend to do reasonably well during inflation (VT, VTI).  TIPS are supposed to react positively to inflation (TIP, SCHP), but I guess we'll find...

I wrestled with whether to look at all our (my wife and me) retirement accounts as one "overall" account, or whether to treat each account as an island unto itself.  I decided to do the latter, since you can't rebalance between retirement accounts.  It's a lot more work to track, but I fee...

If I was just getting ready to create a PP for myself today, I would probably dip a toe into the water by dollar cost-averaging every few months.  Depending on the investing time horizon I was looking at, I'd also change the weightings to be stock-heavy and bond-light... at least for the time being....

MediumTex wrote: I love you guys.

I feel really blessed to have a group of people who care about me enough to riff on my nickname.

In that event, I should add that I attended my high school prom wearing a Medium Tux. 



Hello?  Is this thing on? 

(cue cricket sound effect)

Kshartle wrote:

rocketdog wrote: I'm writing a novel, which is absorbing what little free time I still had left. 

Would you share the premise?

Sorry, I never talk about my writing projects while I'm working on them.  Not even my wife knows anything about it.