I just keep wondering if we're really in a QE / ZIRP pumped secular bear market that began in 2000, with massive sucker rallies... It does have that feeling.  Burned once, shame on me.  Burned twice, shame on you.  Burned thrice, kill 'em all.  Retail is very skeptical about the stock market after ...

phew , after we already went up 1700 points it is first  back in  today ?  Thats the price paid for avoiding 1700+ points to the downside.  Worry less about the gains and more about the losses.  The gains will take care of themselves. I just keep wondering if we're really in a QE / ZIRP pumped secu...

mathjak107 wrote:

MachineGhost wrote: Budd's a great contrarian indicator.

ha ha ha , now i am thinking of buying gld if budds getting out .

phew , after we already went up 1700 points it is first  back in  today ?  Oh yes. The plan is to trade no more often than once a month. Whipsaws are pretty much guaranteed every few years.  And, you will underperform during bull markets. But you will never be in for a true bear. The risk adjusted ...

My wife likes her Ford CMAX hybrid. It has gutsy acceleration. We tested the Pruis, and didn't care for it.

I personally don't care for the CMAX on-board electronics, they are fussy and confusing. But the car itself is great, very well thought out use of space, tons of headroom.

The Meb Faber Ivy-10 ETF portfolio is back in US Large Caps and US REIT as of today. And bonds.

US Small Cap, all non-US stocks, non-US REIT, commodities are all not in play.

Maybe we have to go global and emerging for growth , after some of this current severe decline abates. Maybe the 21st Century PP is 50% US stocks, 50% non-US, and a big slice of those Emerging markets.20% REIT, 20% Gold, 20% US Treasuries... ooops, that's Meb Faber's Ivy-5 portfolio. The backtesting...

US stocks to the far right... they have been racing ahead for so many years, and non-US have been sucking for a long time. Maybe time for a reversal?

Long duration bonds should be the asset to own in that kind of environment because they keep making their coupon payments and you might get a pop in terms of price appreciation. Cash is also good, especially if some of your "cash" portion is in savings bonds. Stocks don't like deflation o...

If you get an external HSA going, I think you can do a tax-free transfer of funds once a year out of your workplace HSA, and then invest those as you see fit. HSABANK.COM is connected to TD Ameritrade.

Some people are trading NUGT... triple-leverage gold ETF. It got slammed -27% in the past two days. Insanity. Only computers can trade stuff like that.

There is a new since 2014 annuity vehicle, created by legal changes. The QLAC allows you to defer some of your Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) problem until age 85. This is important for people with significant conventional IRA and 401(k) accumulations. you can only buy a $125,000 QLAC, but ever...

Aren't all doctors above average?

Same exact thing happened to me with BCBS of Texas. They withdrew from the private marketplace. This is creating sheer havoc. Fortunately, I got full-time work with benefits in September    I stopped paying my friggin' BCBS bill after September.

Oh, my. What money does to people.

Just removed all my accounts from PC.  I'm tired of login errors whenever something screws up in the chain, the notices from the affected financial institution and the risk of the account being locked out and having to go through the annoying procedure to unlock it over the phone.  It's Quicken for...

it will be interesting to see  how the social security tool integrates with the over all investment plan . dr pfau had an interesting article last week on the subject of "bridge portfolio's " that is a very conservative way of having a separate little portfolio to bridge you 62-70 that is...

not at all .  there is so little difference between an s&p 500 fund  and a total market fund in return . in fact  even when small and mid caps were running 5-6% ahead of the s&p 500  the last few years there is typically less than 1% difference between them . 75% of the return  of the 5000 ...

Tried rebalancing once a month when following 200 day moving averages via an Ivy portfolio in my VP and failed miserably; could not tear my eyes off of stockcharts.com.  This was doubly the case when the trendlines were moving strongly one way or another in the period immediately before the allotte...

dutchtraffic wrote: Simply following a 200 day MA will get you stopped out all over the place.

One key point is to only check 1x per month, same day of the month. It will cause some excess trades, for sure. Small price to pay for potential benefits. But it's not a lazy portfolio.

Market time the HBPP, and it will be a fine accumulation portfolio, and still low volatility . My understanding of timing is that it's a way to reduce volatility (not increase returns). So why go through all the trouble with a portfolio that already has low volatility? This is a key point... volati...

My own conclusions are that gold is essentially a poor man's replacement for inadequate equity exposure, some minimum level of gold is always needed to deal with high inflation periods to have a buffer zone, 100% equity isn't really that much riskier than other portfolios and using market timing on...

I found some seasonality charts online, but nothing that was really convincing (like... no error bars).

Ally Bank, 0.99%, it's their regular savings account. I have moved our checking over there, too.