Oh man, my hands are itching to 'optimize' that chart by adding some stocks and/or bonds
Not doing it!

Interesting, I like the simplicity! What is the reason you didn't include a small stock allocation at all? Can a portfolio like this act as a sort of counterweight/inverse correlation to your career? I can imagine that for a disaster portfolio you'd want to own some stocks as it's very likely to be ...

There has been some discussion about treasury duration for the Desert Portfolio, but I think it the duration was 5 years instead of 10. That would reduce the outperformance somewhat.

A 3% yield might still look appealing, but what about long-term yields <1%, like Germany? When are yields too low? 30year German bonds are yielding 0.8% currently, that’s comparable with a 2-year CD with basically zero risk. The volatility of yield changes at such a low starting point will be explos...

Thanks for your post Kevin K. Because of concern about long term bonds, I adjusted my portfolio by lowering duration. Currently you gain very little by holding on to long-term bonds while the potential downside risk is incredible. It's probably even worse for a Eurozone PP, like mine. Maybe rates wi...

When you start a PP you know that gold can easily go down for 10-20 years. As long as one or more other assets make up for it. PP has performed exactly as expected. It's not a portfolio to make money, it's for protecting your money. There was a lot of talk about 'solid 3-5% real returns', but I don'...

Good point about the possible need for simplicity when for some reason you cannot do that yourself anymore. Setting up and maintaining the PP seems very easy to me, but I know most people around me have have zero experience or interest in maintaining such a portfolio. A one-fund solution like Welles...

Hi Jeffreyalan, what is your goal with your Variable Portfolio? Are you planning to find an allocation and stick with it?

I think it would help if you add the names of the ETF's.

Some nice fee reductions for 4 Irish ishares etf's. The fee reduction from 0.33% to 0.12% of the iShares MSCI EMU etf is particularly interesting for Eurozone investors! http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/news/blackrock-cuts-charges-on-multi-billion-etf-range/a1126023?ref=wealth_manager_all_storie...

That's a great allocation!
Using only two funds is a nice simplified way of implementing the PP, and it's still widely diversified. The international exposure and the silver might help or not, but it likely won't make a huge difference either way.

Are you going to keep some cash on the side as well?

Hi Juandelarocha, -0.5% and 1.8% in a year doesn't mean much and sounds to me like you're focussing too much on short-term results. Both the PP and a more conventional stock-heavy porftfolio can go nowhere for 10 years. 1 year results are meaningless. It also seems you were expecting something diffe...

Hi Libertarian666,

If I may ask, what is your strategy with the other 30% of your portfolio? With 70% gold, my guess is that you don't have a lot of faith in stocks and bonds? Just curious about the portfolio allocation.

I believe the US withholding tax is 30% of the dividend yield. This happens before you pay your local taxes. Depending on the treaties between your country and the US you might be able to get some of the 30% back. Irish domiciled ETF’s only pay 15% withholding tax on US assets so that could be a bet...

That seems like a very reasonable portfolio to me. Certainly ‘good enough’. One thing you have to keep in mind is that taxation of US-based etf’s can be very different from EU-based ETF’s, especially regarding withholding taxes and estate taxes. I didn’t want to worry about stuff like that so I deci...

My online savings account still has a positive yield: 0.35%.
All short-term euro treasuries have negative yields. The iShares 0-1y euro etf for example has a YTM of -0.5%.

So that’s a difference of almost 1 percent.

Small update on my EU-PP. Been invested in the PP for almost a year now and still very happy with it. Made two small changes: I've replaced Lyxor EuroMTS 15y+ (LYXF) with iShares € Govt Bond 20yr Target Duration (E20Y). E20Y uses higher quality bonds (No bonds from Spain/Italy) and has a higher dura...

It's a basic eurozone PP, with 4x25 eurozone stocks, eurozone bonds, eurozone cash and gold

I've got data going back to 2001. Most of my data are yearly index returns from MSCI and Barclays indices. I've used some data from the old Marc de Mesel website. The indices I've used are the MSCI Emu, Barclays Euro Government 15-30 and Barclays Euro Government 1-3. https://i.imgur.com/OWaBbd1.png

Pretty good indeed, thanks for sharing!

When I setup my PP I compared eurozone PP's with different stock indices over the same timeframe as you did.
Turned out it mattered very little whether you used the world index, the emu index or 50/50 world/emu. I'll try to find it and share it here.

I agree as well that only a US PP can really benefit from the USD-Gold relationship. However, gold is still a unique asset with very low correlation to other assets in any currency. It just doesn't offer the same protection as it does in a US PP. @Hal, I like the way you describe your portfolio. I f...

Without Catalonia, Spanish sovereign debt becomes more risky, loses value. Their Debt-to-GDP ratio goes up. My guess is this story is being actively suppressed most probably by the financial elites and the EU. It's all over the news in all major European countries as far as I can tell. Nothing is b...

This depends on your goal as well. Most people I know treat their taxable savings as completely separate from their retirement savings. They don't have any choice how their retirement money is invested. Any further savings are usually for general wealth building. The money could be used as additiona...

- Am I stressing myself too much over potential EU issues? (Don't feel history-savvy enough to judge what would happen if EU goes away.) It's very hard (impossible) to predict what will happen when the eurozone breaks up. I believe that 25% gold plus having the majority of my fixed income in the st...

I didn't know DeGiro charges for keeping etf's on foreign exchanges! If I understand correctly t's 2,50 euro a year for each exchange? I choose those ETF's because they were lower cost than most other comparable ETF's. I read some of the discussions about eurozone bonds and for me the combined durat...

Thanks Europeanwizard,

I'm using DeGiro (custody account) for now.