Is anyone worried that the PP is only up about 1%, total, in the past 24 months (since February 3rd, 2012)?  Is this the worst 24 month stretch the PP has ever had?

Sounds pretty close to a violation of HB's Rule#7 to me. Personally, if I had a house that was paid for I would leave it paid for and if I had (I have) a house that was not paid for I would not take any extraordinary measures to pay off the mortgage unless it had a high interest rate (and maybe not...

If you take $1M equity out of your house by refinancing you have to add a mortgage payment to your expenses - and it sounds like you're not considering this.  At 3% (which I suspect is not possible), a 30 year loan is a little more than $50k/yr (PI) while a 15 year is nearly $83k/yr so presumably y...

Hello all, I have a PP with about $5.2 million in it (98% of which is in taxable accounts), and I have about $1 million in equity in my home.  That represents everything I have - I do not have a VP.  Should I refinance and pull the equity out of my house and put it in my PP?  Based on historical per...

GTU has been selling at a discount ever since the big gold drop in April.  The discount doesn't seem to be getting any less even with the price increase over the last two months. I've been waiting for the discount to decrease, or go back to a premium, so I can sell and buy some physical gold. Does ...

I would take that article with a grain of salt.  The author of the article is under the assumption that the ETFs operate exactly as they are supposed to. The exact same skepticism should be applied to Sprott's funds.  Either you assume that all trusts and ETFs follow the law & their trust docum...

KevinW wrote: The HB-orthodox answer is to have all the stock dividends, bond interest, and cash interest deposited into the cash allocation. Then follow the 15/35 rebalancing rules as usual.

Thanks!  That's exactly the information I was looking for.

Before getting too committed to PHYS or any Sprott offering, I suggest reading the following article. If anything, some of the more well known funds like GLD are actually more transparent and reliable than PHYS: http://kiddynamitesworld.com/when-your-precious-metals-blogger-doesnt-understand-how-et...

Why would there be any capital gains if someone redeemed their shares for a gold bar? That sounds like getting a share certificate for a holding at a brokerage, which isn't a taxable event. When PHYS opened, they had to buy a bunch of physical gold.  If you redeem your PHYS shares for physical gold...

Hello, I have read both Craig's book and HB's Failsafe Investing, and I think I recall that HB said not to reinvest dividends into the stock market, and just add them to the cash position.  Is that correct?  Also, what am I supposed to be doing with the interest I am earning from my 30 year treasuri...

Hello everyone, I currently have 80% of my PP gold allocation in GTU, and 20% in IAU.  I am rethinking my IAU holding as I have concerns that they may use fractional reserves, and I am thinking about swapping my IAU holding for PHYS (I still want to remain diversified from GTU, just to be safe).  I ...

Hello everyone, I liquidated my old non-PP portfolio when I set up my PP in June, and that caused me to incur a large short term gain from my old portfolio.  Since then, the Treasuries in my PP have lost about 10% of their value.  I would like to sell my Treasuries to lock in the short term loss so ...

The way I look at it, at least in a taxable account, it's very hard to lose with GTU as long as you are not paying a premium because GTU is taxed at the long term capital gains rate (as long as you file the correct paperwork with the IRS), saving you 8% from the collectibles rate that gold ETFs and ...

I believe GTU says they are just holding gold without all the complications of the ETFs. I think GTU is also eligible for normal capital gains taxation, but check with your tax advisor. Yes, I confirmed with my CPA about the fact that GTU is taxed as capital gains, not as a collectible, so GTU will...

I believe GTU says they are just holding gold without all the complications of the ETFs. I think GTU is also eligible for normal capital gains taxation, but check with your tax advisor. Yes, I confirmed with my CPA about the fact that GTU is taxed as capital gains, not as a collectible, so GTU will...

Anyone who reads a lot online about gold has seen "experts" warning of a paper gold and COMEX collapse, urging people to buy physical gold.  Of course, a lot of these experts sell physical gold, so they very often have a conflict of interest.  I see a lot of people saying that the gold fun...

I'm using a google docs spreadsheet to track my portfolio and the recommended method for getting the current prices for treasuries seems to be broken.  Anyone else having the same issue? Here's the cell contents for fetching the current price: =index(ImportHtml("http://fixedincome.fidelity.com...

I'm wondering if Fidelity got tired of the extra hits to their servers and began blocking traffic coming from google apps.

I'm using a google docs spreadsheet to track my portfolio and the recommended method for getting the current prices for treasuries seems to be broken.  Anyone else having the same issue? Here's the cell contents for fetching the current price: =index(ImportHtml("http://fixedincome.fidelity.com...

I see somebody else posted this recently.  I tried to delete this post but it wouldn't let me.  Sorry.

Back in the early 1980s when 30 year treasury bonds were yielding over 10%, defined benefit pension plans were modeling future employer contributions based upon an 8% expected future return on assets.  I often ask people who were working with pension plans back then whether it crossed anyone's mind...

I bet your stocks are now $1.4m though!  ;) Try not to get too caught up with the fluctuations of the individual assets. I know that's not an easy thing to do, especially not with a huge portfolio where 1% is enough to buy a luxury car, but it's the only way to stay sane. The PP is a volatility-har...

just to clarify...if my math is sound....sounds like you have about $2M of LTT? I have $1.2M LTT.  I started with $1.3M last month  :( I'm thinking the main benefit of tax loss harvesting is that if you delay paying the taxes, that money stays in your brokerage account and grows.  So, for example, ...

I spoke to Fidelity today and the rep at their bond desk told me that for me to sell my treasuries and buy back treasuries with a different maturity date  (to avoid a wash sale, which my CPA says is avoided if the maturity date is different), I would be looking at an average bid ask spread of about ...

Yep, they are pretty much free.  Of course there is a bid-ask spread with all these things, but it's extremely small with treasuries.  I was looking at this earlier today, and a bond I had just bought auction was selling at a yield of 0.003% more on the secondary market.  So the spreads are pretty ...