OK, I'm officially over 35% on stocks right now - 35.06% to be exact. Thanks for all the input. I'm leaning towards waiting until after January 1st to re-balance in order to defer the taxes. The question is, WWHD (what would Harry do)?

I agree that based on the historical PP data, a 4% SWR is safe for retirement. But if it's in a taxable account, the taxes will come out of the 4%. For example, if someone has a PP with $6 million in it, they can safely take out $240,000 per year, but taxes will apply to that $240,000. So, how does ...

Oops, sorry, it's a taxable account. I didn't even think about the fact that it's especially not good to sell in December because if I wait 3 more weeks, I will have an entire year extra to pay the taxes. I'm really torn about this. It is all long-term capital gains? What's your capital gains rate?...

Oops, sorry, it's a taxable account. I didn't even think about the fact that it's especially not good to sell in December because if I wait 3 more weeks, I will have an entire year extra to pay the taxes. I'm really torn about this.

My stock market holdings are getting very close to 35% (34.84%) to be exact. Do most people re-balance the second they see it hit 35%? Or should I at least wait to see if it closes at 35%? And maybe wait a few days to see if it stays there or if it was just a fluke? Forgive me if there is already a ...

This new fund is long gold and is also long US dollar by shorting some non-US currencies.
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/strong-d ... haven.html
Is there any way to figure out the historical performance/back-test this?

Sophie, you might be right. But there was quite a gold mania at the time. Yes, there was a gold mania in the 70s that lasted many years, but not because of pent up demand. The pent up demand may have had some impact early on, but if you look the historical inflation chart, you see that inflation wa...

I'm actually down about 6% from my all time high this year. About 1/3rd of my investment gains since I started the PP in June 2013 has been wiped out. My CAGR for the past 40 month period has dropped from a peak of about 5% to 3.3%. It's a bummer, but I don't know what else to invest in that is safe...

Trump's victory is having a profound and unexpected (by me) negative effect on the PP. I was actually expecting the opposite. Is anyone else very worried about this? What are other PPers thinking about this?

The article is definitely doom porn. But putting that aside, I think the article is going off-topic by talking about physical cash being banned. While that is something that could possibly happen in the future, I don't see how that affects the PP significantly. I don't keep my PP cash in my mattress...

Sorry dude, my read of history indicates the guys with guns always win. If government doesn't matter why are there so many lobbyists? Any thinking person understands government defines the capitalist goal posts and field size. This has never not been true. So back to my initial comment: useless hyp...

I'm not sure it's really fair to compare the returns of a 60/40 portfolio (without cash) to the PP when cash is yielding around zero. Has anyone run numbers on a 33.3/33.3/33.3 PP without cash (maybe there is an existing thread on this forum about this)? I'm also curious about what the optimal re-b...

I'm not sure it's really fair to compare the returns of a 60/40 portfolio (without cash) to the PP when cash is yielding around zero. Has anyone run numbers on a 33.3/33.3/33.3 PP without cash (maybe there is an existing thread on this forum about this)? I'm also curious about what the optimal re-ba...

Sure, and you could do this with options too, right? How do you think interest rate hikes will be reflected in the expenses of the leveraged ETFs? I can't remember who is running a small options version of PP, but they post an update annually. I personally don't recommend one unless you are doing i...

Interactive Brokers has cheap margin loan rates, under 2%. So, based on historical performance, a 2X PP should yield about 2 X 9% = 18%, minus the approximately 2% for the margin loan = 16%. I could start a hedge fund with that type of return :) Obviously, margin has risks. What exactly are the risk...

When I sold my house, I sold it to a flipper - and spent a lot of time talking to him about the economics of his business. I've thought seriously of doing hard money lending - but have not yet done it. These are the things that I would want before I would invest: 1) Part of a small group.  8 or 10 ...

It appears there hasn't been any discussion on this topic in years.  Hard money lending investing is where you, the investor, lend money, typically to a hard money lending company, who in turn lends the money, at a high interest rate, to borrowers for real estate-related loans.  For example, someone...

I believe I read that, as of late, excess reserves, which are reserves above what banks are required to have, are near record levels. So, this means banks don't want to lend, people don't want to borrow, or some combination of both. Banks don't lend reserves into the economy. How do you know that t...

The same is true of stocks!  That is, a share of stock is simply a claim on the company's future earnings stream. In October 2014, U.S. Stock market capitalization was $22 trillion ( link ), while GDP was $17.5 trillion ( see page 3 ). I think owning a share of stock is a bit different.  If you own...

The debt (which backs money now) is actually a claim on future earnings. The same is true of stocks!  That is, a share of stock is simply a claim on the company's future earnings stream. In October 2014, U.S. Stock market capitalization was $22 trillion ( link ), while GDP was $17.5 trillion ( see ...

Here's my interpretation with: 25% total stock market 25% long term treasuries 25% gold 25% reits [img width=500]http://i64.tinypic.com/1yww00.jpg[/img] It's kinda like the PP on steroids. Not bad.  One thing that makes me pause is that once you account for REITs in the total stock market fund an t...

Marc Faber has been saying for a while that he recommends an asset allocation of 25% gold, 25% stocks, 25% bonds (and cash), and 25% real estate.  I don't think he ever says how much cash he holds.  So, this made me wonder if anyone has done a back test of 25% gold, 25% stocks, 25% bonds, and 25% re...

3% probably is overly conservative (if it's set for tax reasons only).  If you're paying 25% as an overall tax rate, presumably you have income from other sources which would reduce the amount you need to draw from the portfolio. I was puzzling about this as well, and decided to discount my project...

My approach is to ensure that I never withdraw more than 3% for living expenses - and then just pay whatever taxes come up out of the portfolio cash fund. I was thinking the same thing - that I could just spend 3% out of the 4%, and save the remaining 1% for taxes, but that seems overly conservativ...

A conservative, safe withdrawal rate for the PP appears to be 4%.  In a taxable account, some taxes may be incurred on the 4% withdrawal.  But it seems very complicated to estimate those taxes.  For example, when cashing out of assets early on, taxes will be minimal because gains have been minimal. ...