If the US government defaults on it's debt, wouldn't that make the dollar worthless? I'd assume if the entity that can print it's own money defaults, corporate bonds would fair much worse. Besides, if the US government defaults, dollar goes down (hyperinflation), wouldn't gold (priced in dollars) s...

I'm quite aware of what you were discussing, but respectfully, I submit you are not thinking this one through. I hope you will do so a little bit more. I would also suggest you Google up stock lending fees. I'm trying very hard to think this through, but I'm very confused about the decay issue.  De...

I'm quite aware of what you were discussing, but respectfully, I submit you are not thinking this one through. I hope you will do so a little bit more. I would also suggest you Google up stock lending fees. I'm trying very hard to think this through, but I'm very confused about the decay issue.  De...

I've mentioned this several times but I will reiterate. Make sure you understand the math of leveraged ETFs and imagine one of the assets you are short has several years of a very good run. But if it isn't clear lets do this example. Imagine an asset moves a factor of two. If it goes against you an...

I've been doing more research on these leveraged ETFs, and I see articles online saying that you are better off shorting the inverse ETF than buying the long ETF.  So, one would short TTT, SPXU and DGLD.  Here is one of those articles: http://seekingalpha.com/article/2444425-benefits-of-short-sellin...

If they are tax inefficient, then I would do it in my IRA. If they are tax efficient, then I would do it outside my IRA. So, I can't figure out how to proceed until I know more about the taxes involved. If all goes well, likely you will be rebalancing enough that tax efficiency isn't going to be wh...

My plan was to only put 2% of my overall portfolio into the 3x PP, so I am not overly worried about the risks.  I happen to have 2% of my net worth in my IRA, so I was thinking about making my entire IRA a 3x PP, depending on the tax treatment of these ETFs.  I looked over the prospectuses of these...

My plan was to only put 2% of my overall portfolio into the 3x PP, so I am not overly worried about the risks.  I happen to have 2% of my net worth in my IRA, so I was thinking about making my entire IRA a 3x PP, depending on the tax treatment of these ETFs.  I looked over the prospectuses of these ...

I am about to pull the trigger in a 3x PP for my VP (UGLD, UPRO, and TMF).  How tax efficient are these 3x ETFs?  Morningstar apparently has tax data on ETFs, but I'm not sure I understand everything.  For example, for TMF, it says "Potential Cap Gains Exposure" 18.89.  What does that mean...

The short answer is that the "spot price" is set in the futures market.  Basically you take the "future" price for gold and discount it by the "risk free" rate (which happens to be near zero at the moment) to come up with today's price.  Since gold is traded around the...

I am confused about how the price of gold is determined.  On the one hand, gold is priced twice a day by the "London Gold Fix", as described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_fixing But gold is also traded on exchanges as physical gold and futures, and the price changes constantly th...

How does re-balancing work?  Also, this would be much more inefficient from a tax perspective, given that the interest on Treasuries is taxed as ordinary income.

You may want to look at results since ~1976, since the PP wasn't available to investors until Gold was legalized in 1975.  The return data from the early 70's has a significant effect on backtesting, but gold wasn't tradable in those years so I think its most realistic to exclude those early years ...

It's even more striking if you look at the performance of the PP, as a whole, since January 1, 1972.  According to http://www.peaktotrough.com/hbpp.cgi which calculates historical PP performance, if it was never rebalanced, the CAGR would have been only 7.10%.  With 15/35 rebalancing, the CAGR was ...

It's even more striking if you look at the performance of the PP, as a whole, since January 1, 1972.  According to http://www.peaktotrough.com/hbpp.cgi which calculates historical PP performance, if it was never rebalanced, the CAGR would have been only 7.10%.  With 15/35 rebalancing, the CAGR was 9...

This may sound like sort of a dumb question, but when we are talking about 4% annual withdrawal rate, we are talking about pre-tax money, right?  For example, let's say someone is retiring on $1 million, and they want live on a 4% withdrawal rate.  If they take out 4% from the PP, depending on how m...

plus, historically, real estate has averaged an increase of about 4% per year in value, so I would get the appreciation as well.  And even if there is an economic crash and real estate drops a lot in value, I will still have my tenants paying rent.  Yes, if there is high unemployment, I could have ...

jason, I love the PP, but I wouldn't use 9.5% for a portfolio containing the following: 1) A stock market with 4.5% and 5% earnings yield for the last 10 years and 1 year, respectively. 2) A bond portfolio yielding <4% for 20-30 years. 3) A bond portfolio yielding <.2% for 1 year. 4) A yellow metal...

I am intrigued by the concept of owning rental properties, using mortgages as leverage.  One can expect to make about 9.5% per year with the PP, so a $1 million portfolio would yield around $95,000 per year, historically.  But if you take $1 million and use it as 20% down payments to buy rental prop...

I would take out 4% of the value of my entire portfolio from the cash position each year, and then rebalance when cash goes below 15%, right? Yep.  The good thing about withdrawing from cash is that the taxes in most years will be very low.  At current interest rates much of the bond interest is of...

I think most of the people in this forum agree that the 4% withdrawal rule in retirement will work with the PP.  I would take out 4% of the value of my entire portfolio from the cash position each year, and then rebalance when cash goes below 15%, right?  For example, if I have a $1 million PP, I wo...

Hi, Newbie to PP here.  Since 2008, I have been mainly in cash and physical gold, and while I feel generally more secure, obviously it has been a bumpy road without having the other elements in place as I have found out. I have two questions for more experienced PPers.  1) Most all my gold holding ...

Interesting discussion. I also read that gold isn't the best thing to invest in under inflation conditions. Here is another chart which demonstrates it - you might be better off investing in real estate: http://www.statista.com/statistics/272745/secure-forms-of-investment-in-an-inflation/ That's a ...

I don't have much info on the tax issue or size of it, but note that there have been some large redemptions out of PHYS recently due to the fact it was trading at a discount, aroun 14% has been withdrawn, so not sure if that will create a large tax bill for the fund. Considering that PHYS is tradin...

I already have most of my gold in GTU, and the next time I buy gold, I would like to diversify a bit.  I was thinking that PHYS is a good option because it's outside the US and hopefully does not use fractional reserves.  From what I have seen, the main disadvantage of PHYS as compared to GTU is tha...