WhiteElephant wrote:Long-time lurker here from the Netherlands.

Another Dutchie here Belated welcome

Which broker do you use?

My understanding of Harry Browne's PP is that it is crucial to have a Long Term Bond without any credit risk. Therefore I bought the 2046 Bund after a lot of hesitation given yield is so low. The idea is that your long term bond should offer you deflation risk protection while excluding any credit ...

This has happened before, right? I find this hugely interesting, especially with the recent very successful Iraqi bond sale.

Has anyone here invested in risky state bonds, as part of their variable portfolio? If so, why?

A column on the MoneyWeek website is titled: Bond bubble? What bond bubble? By John Stepek Quote from the article: "Iraq has issued $1bn-worth of five-year debt. The deal was seven times oversubscribed. In other words, investors were queueing around the block to buy this stuff. So much so that ...

A few things to think about Great pointers which I didn't consider. As for point 3, yes that's something. However I feel somehow "caught" because I'm reading pretty horrible things in the news, and here on the forums as well. This stuff just drives me nuts: European bonds rebound as ECB o...

So Kbg posted about an article in a previous topic , and it got a follow-up named How to Play US Treasury ETFs in an Era of Rising Rates . I found it very interesting. I've been setting up an EU PP, and bought iShares Euro Government Bond 15-30yr UCITS ETF (IBGL) and it hasn't been sitting well with...

That's great. It has gotten a bit quieter around here lately, and I mostly lurk these days as well (sorry, Mr. Leavy, I'm sure you miss my religion posts), but there are still a great many smart folks hanging out in these parts. Offtopic, but have you noticed that Tyler from Portfolio Charts has re...

Mark Leavy wrote: How do I invest?

Hal wrote:

europeanwizard wrote:Do you guys actively trade on gold? Maybe as part of your variable portfolio?

Try this site for some ideas.
https://www.youtube.com/user/belangp/videos

Thanks, looks interesting!

Do you guys actively trade on gold? Maybe as part of your variable portfolio?

I wouldn't have expected that. On one Dutch forum I frequent, I see most people having a 100% stocks portfolio, saying "there are riskier strategies".

What's the reason for such low yields? They seem lower than what they had even during the great depression. The official coupon interest is 4% or something, but these bonds are sold by the state via a tender system at tranches starting at 100K or so I read. So when I as a private investor go and bu...

From what I've read here on the board, you can put your cash in ~1 year T-Bills according to the book(s). But lots of people also put them in CDs. Are there other options? Does it matter which one you pick? In my case, I'd either get Dutch 1 year bonds, which yield -0.74% at the moment. For a one ye...

2% to 1% causes the price to go up 23%; 1% to 0.5% causes the price to go up 13%; 0.5% to 0% causes the price to go up 15%; 1% to 0% causes the price to go up 30%. Craig's comment about 1% 30-year bonds providing little insurance is borne out by these numbers. The quarter has dropped :) Thank you v...

A bond's price moves inversely to its yield. So if the yield is extremely low, there's a low ceiling to how high the value of the bond can get. So, the low-yielding bonds are a bad hedge for stocks, because the bond price can only get so high? When stock prices would crash, where would investors th...

So suppose I keep the usual 25% in my portfolio. I live in The Netherlands, so I buy the following, because that's the bond with the longest maturity date that my broker offers. NL0000102234 NL 4.00% 2037/01/15 From what I understand, I now run the interest rate risk. This is clear and acceptable to...

dualstow wrote:I loved your post!

Amen.

LTT interest rate risk is hedged most directly by the T-BILLS portion of the PP. OK, I have to let this sink in for a bit. For some reason, to me the bonds part turns out to be the most difficult to comprehend. Did not expect this! I've decided that I just need to start playing with this. So I plac...

Similarly for cash I would use Dutch short term bills/bonds. Rates are negative -0.6% but that is an insurance against bank failures. Apparently the market thinks this risk is high. Physical gold storage costs more than that. Thanks for this tip, and the rest of the comment. For some reason, my bro...

Your rational, logical, legitimate fear of long-term European sovereign debt instruments isn't actually a fear about BONDS the fear that you are expressing in your posts does not strike me as the fear of someone who is merely afraid that LTT will be a losing asset (you seem to accept that this is h...

From the context, it seems to me that Craig was concerned about interest rate risk related to the duration of the bonds, rather than about their Euro origin. Thanks for pointing that out. So I did some reading elsewhere, and re-read the topic where Craig and MachineGhost were commenting. And it see...

Just a quick note; reading through the comments, I realized I'm missing some fundamentals here. I'm going to do some reading before replying, but just wanted to pop in and say I'm very grateful for the responses!

If it wasn't LTT that you were worrying about, it would be one of the other core PP asset classes. I have no problem buying gold when its price is going down. After all, it's part of the plan. I do have severe doubts when Craig says that he wouldn't buy European bonds. Now you may simply say: no ma...

tarentola wrote:For comparison, my own Euro PP results over the last four years:

So what do you use for the bonds part?

I'd just go with something simple like 40% IEGA But how does that fix my (and other people's) worries about the low yield of long-bonds and its associated risks? What happens to this allocation if the euro appreciates for example a 20% to the level where it was just 3 years ago? 3 of the 4 assets h...