The key to solving this puzzle seems to be that the death will be so ordinary that it wouldn't get written up in the local paper.  So no death during a mugging or some shooting incident.  I'm thinking a car crash; we know this man drives everywhere.  MT says the thought experiment is about risk, so ...

Pet Hog, not sure if you'd be willing to make a modification, but it strikes me there's a little room for more granularity in the color coding. Since the 3-6% average return range makes up such a vast majority of the data, it would be interesting to see that broken down perhaps into two subsets lik...

MangoMan wrote: As of mid-day, GTU is up over 2% while GLD is flat.

Consistent with GTU's 7.0% NAV discount yesterday becoming 5.0% today.

Last post for a while, I promise. [img width=600]http://i.imgur.com/qqOtJ6I.jpg[/img] This chart is similar to the one I posted yesterday, but this one was calculated for a PP with biennial (every two years) rebalancing on the anniversary.  So, starting January 1 1972 and then rebalancing on Jan 1 1...

Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me but you can really see the January/February effect on that line chart. It's small but pretty consistent. Thanks for the charts/graphs. Iwealth, I think it's an artifact arising from the way I calculated the returns.  The January and February data include the r...

[img width=600]http://i.imgur.com/Oz9crTM.jpg[/img] Taking the final values from the right-hand side of each line in the chart above gives the following chart of real CAGRs over the years for annual-rebalance-on-anniversary PPs: [img width=600]http://i.imgur.com/417ep7P.jpg[/img] That's a pretty co...

1972  2014  2015 Jan  4.712%  4.838% Feb  4.739%  4.921% Mar  4.719%  4.783% Apr  4.645%  4.732% May  4.401%  4.416% Jun  4.306% Jul  4.412% Aug  4.363% Sep  4.456% Oct  4.472% Nov  4.363% Dec  4.583% Sorry about the earlier post (I posted instead of previewed).  These are the real CAGRs from my ch...

[img width=600]http://i.imgur.com/Oz9crTM.jpg[/img] Here's a full chart of the real CAGRs of PPs started on the first of the month of every month since January 1972.  These PPs are rebalanced annually, with dividends reinvested.  Again, I took the PP data from PeakToTrough.com and CPI-U data from bl...

[img width=500]http://i.imgur.com/ZJxPo4g.jpg[/img] In case anyone's interested, I updated my earlier chart of the last 10 years of monthly PPs, incorporating the May CPI-U number.  Nothing major to see.  I started my PP in May 2013; the yellow bar after two years invested agrees with the 2.00% real...

According to the charts on kitco , the gold spot price rose about 1.3% from 4 pm on June 17 ($1187) to 4 pm on June 18 ($1202).  That's when the NYSE closes and that's when you should be comparing the price of any gold-tracking ETF or CEF.  There was an increase of about 2.4% if you look at the Lond...

One thing I wasn't quite certain of in the offer is whether the trade is for the current value (including the discount), or at a zero discount.  Does anyone know for certain what "nav to nav basis" means? At the current discount of -6.3%, I'd lose out since I got some shares at -4%.  It m...

While I was still in the mood for playing with Excel, I thought I'd try changing the starting month in my earlier appendix wedge chart for a bit more granularity.  Not everyone starts their PP on January 1st, nor rebalances on January 1st, so I crunched some numbers for different starting dates (the...

Apologies to Tyler, but I've made this appendix for his chart to take into consideration the last 10 years.  I've stuck to his format, but the colors are slightly different.  Again, these are real returns and the same conclusions can be drawn: no negative three-year returns. [img width=300]http://i....

Hi Flagator, welcome to the board. I began my PP just over two years ago, after about 15 years with no firm investing philosophy.  I had doubled my money as a newbie during the dotcom era, then lost about 80% of that using a combination of stupidity, ignorance, inexperience, and blind trust.  Eventu...

@PetHog: Think of each data point as a snapshot on Jan 1st of each year.  So invested Jan 1st 1972 and withdrawn Jan 1st 1973.  This way, the first column reflects the real return for the initial investment year.  I understand it's a little confusing on the surface, but the "years held" i...

Beautiful new charts, Tyler.  Would it be too much work to add a new column for the PP performance in 2014?  Craig wrote about that here :  +9.1 or +8.9% return depending on how cash was invested. Now you've got me wondering, does "invested in 1972, withdrawn in 2013" mean invested on 12/3...

So... here's what I have in my spreadsheet.  From March 26, 2004 to June 5 2015: The black line is nominal returns (9.58% CAGR over this period) The blue/purple line, just below it is the inflation adjusted return.  (7.32% over this period) The vertical lines are rebalance points (15/35) Mark, I tr...

So... here's what I have in my spreadsheet.  From March 26, 2004 to June 5 2015: The black line is nominal returns (9.58% CAGR over this period) The blue/purple line, just below it is the inflation adjusted return.  (7.32% over this period) The vertical lines are rebalance points (15/35) Mark, I tr...

Some movement on the Sprott/Goldtrust front... Sprott Formally Launches Offers to Central GoldTrust and Silver Bullion Trust Unitholders The number of Sprott Physical Gold Trust units to be distributed to each Central GoldTrust unitholder will be determined on a NAV to NAV basis. For example, based ...

Your brain is 25% cholesterol by weight And of course cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone. That number didn't seem right to me.  According to wikipedia, the total amount of cholesterol in a 150-lb man is 35 g.  If it was all located in his grey matter, 25% cholesterol would imply a brain wei...

I agree, Benko.  But I don't think any researchers of, say, string theory would claim to know it to be true (that's what piqued me about your earlier statement).  They might personally convince themselves that, by golly, it just has to be true, but if it were to be proven wrong then they would have ...

When I have my self driving car, I am all for traffic lights going away... Self-driving cars was also my first thought when the traffic lights argument was raised.  If we don't have a government controlling traffic, we might devise alternative methods for road safety that don't involve lights at al...

And much of what we think we know in all areas of science are wrong. I think two distinctions should be made.  Between settled science and conjecture, and between hard science and soft science.  I would say that most of what we think we know in all areas of science is true.  Because, you know, we k...

Bean wrote: Fixed Rate = 0.00%
Inflation Rate = -0.80%
Composite rate = 0.00%

In case anyone is unaware of how I-Bond rates are calculated, this inflation rate is for the six months from September to March.  Annualized, it's –1.60%.  Even better real return at 0% nominal!

I just posted these numbers on the Bonds>"TLT Negative YTD" thread, but thought they might be of interest here, too.  The real yields over the last one, five, and ten years have all been greater than 5%.  This year has been slightly positive.  No cause for concern, yet, in my mind. YTD ret...