Rate hike was one of the worst kept secrets.  All priced in far in advance.

It will be very interesting to see what happens Wednesday especially with LTT's.

After reading "Fail Safe Investing" as well as many other financial books, I came to the conclusion that the HBPP is an excellent investment portfolio to use especially for someone in or near retirement such as myself. I also believe that you should keep the portfolio at 4 X 25. However, I...

Small accounting item - many PP investors use Wellesley Income Fund.  How do you allocate that to your totals - all equity, all bond, all cash, 35-40% equity and 60-65% bond, 35-40% equity and 60-65% cash, or kept as part of your VP? My portfolio is approximately 60 - 70% PP with a VP (completely s...

I swear this forum has become downright depressing. Seems there's no end to people's negativity about the PP and gold. Would seem that's the time to get in. Why so little concern that it took 13+ years for the S&P 500 to get back to where it was, nominally, in 2000? And the fact that story is w...

70% of my IRA plus non retirement portfolio is in the PP. The remainder is in a VP which consists of VWINX.  This leaves me with a total of 30/35/16/19 (stocks, bonds, gold, cash). I use 30/20 rebalancing bands for the PP which is completely separate.

Sorry for your loss.

Since I am retired, I use the cash portion of the portfolio to live on and rebalance when I get close to 15% (usually about 3 years). If I had a ways to go before retirement and a steady job or business, I might consider less cash. Those of us in or close to retirement would probably be best served ...

Royal Resorts are great. We have a timeshare at Sea Aquarium Resort (a Royal Resort) in Curacao. I have friends that stay in one of the Royal's in Cancun/Cozumel and they speak very highly of them.  IMO, you can't beat the Caribbean water and beaches. Have a great time.

Where in the Caribbean?

If you are overly concerned about one component of the PP, just reduce the size of that component as well as all the other components. That way you retain the integrity of the PP for rebalancing and the remainder can be used to establish a VP to tilt your total portfolio in whichever direction you w...

Very well put, Budd. Holding more cash is a great way to shorten your bond duration. And if the Fed does start raising short term rates, our cash will start yielding more. Right now I would be more afraid of not holding LTT's the way the world's financial system looks. As usual, gold is the real wil...

We hear all the talk about the 30+ year bull market in bonds. How do we know that won't turn into a 40 or even a 50 year bull market? One of the main premises of the PP is being agnostic about the future.  I prefer keeping the PP pure and using a VP to tilt your total portfolio.
'

Interest rates have been declining over the past 30-years.  The LT Treasury component of the PP has performed very well in a declining interest rate environment.  But with the Fed edging toward increasing rates in the not-too-distant future, should we consider alternatives to LT Treasuries? If you ...

2% real return would be better than another late 2008 - early 2009 scenario, especially for someone near or in retirement. Being in retirement, it is difficult trying to decide asset allocation to have some income but not risk principal reduction. Your basic choices are stocks, bonds, cash and hard...

Historically, the portfolio will tend to go up simply because more people are pouring more money into the market and the PP is going to capture it regardless of where it goes.  That's a very brief summary of an argument from one of HB's books (forget which one).  Thus, +25% is more likely to occur ...

Just checked Euro bond yields on CNBC web site. UK = 1.6, Germany = .47, even Italy = 1.88. Go figure.

US 10 year yield = 1.95,  Spain 10 year yield = 1.71. Where would you rather invest? We could have a long way to go.

And we've been told the last several years that interest rates had nowhere to go but up. Are US treasury yields heading toward Germany, Great Britain and Japan type yields? why not?!  dont markets largely move in tandem globally? How many forum members at the beginning of 2014 thought long bonds wo...

And we've been told the last several years that interest rates had nowhere to go but up. Are US treasury yields heading toward Germany, Great Britain and Japan type yields?

Oil, being a finite resource will undoubtedly....errr probably....errr maybe go up in value in the future. Whether that is next month, next year or 20 years from now is the question. I do like XLE for an energy investment but not USO. Maybe dollar cost average with 1/4 now and every month or two aft...

I've been out of individual stocks for some time but have been watching a couple of ETF's: XLE and OIH with the recent drop in oil prices.

Still, at some point this 30-year dual bubble in stocks and bonds will end and how will the PP fair if its not a SHTF scenario where gold, guns and ammo becomes the currency of last resort?  So don't pat yourselves on your backs too smugly just yet. I agree with MachineGhost! I have all my retireme...

A quick glance shows my PP plus VWINX portfolio up 4.2% YTD after withdrawals for living expenses, etc. (Withdrawal rate is 4 - 5% annually). I'm quite happy living off the portfolio and watching it increase slightly.

As I posted previously, I have a majority of my investments in the PP with the remainder in VWINX which is conservative, has an excellent track record and pays a 3% dividend. I don't really look at it as a VP because I don't consider this fund as a speculative asset. This reduces my gold allocation ...