My conlusion also, not even worthy a Desert portfolio. And I don't trust the euro. I choose to use a 75:25 stock:gold-portfolio with stock being almost only mandatory retirement savings. Better than just going all stocks to be sure, but in the event of a Great Depression style deflationary event, y...

Hal wrote:A bit of the history here....

https://www.globalfinancialdata.com/gfdblog/?p=2750

Permanently bookmarked for future reference, thanks for that.

Are you suggesting that the HBPP does not work as advertised for international investors, then? Harry Browne never suggested that , he always advocated for following the basic PP principles as applied to whatever domestic economy you live and work in. And the PP has a long and storied history of wo...

I've never heard of the British stock market closing???

As far as long-term trends go, this is how I feel about the PP in regards to peak oil , as well. Perpetually shrinking GDP, massive deleveraging, social and political instability? I don't want to be in a 60/40 portfolio for that. I want to be in gold and cash ahead of time. I guess there are a lot o...

Seems like a legacy portfolio for the uber-wealthy, though. I don't think you would recommend that allocation to the average investor.

The year is 1900: The West is stable, at peace, and is the utterly undisputed hegemonic power of the world. Seems like Europe has finally learned to co-exist and mutually reap the benefits of prosperity, maybe for good? "The Federal Reserve", what's that? Petroleum? Seems like it has some...

It is easy to beat any portfolio by using hindsight to point out how an investor could have done better than any given static, passive portfolio. Yes, apparently the Icelandic investor would have been better sitting on a pile of US$ in 2008 rather than a domestic Icelandic PP, but how was the invest...

Gold does indeed act as a "insurance policy" if a currency should fail. The concerns about a currency failing is not new. No this is not the case. HB has clearly specified it works only wrt USD. When there is significant world economy worry then money flows into the world reserve currency...

If it wasn't LTT that you were worrying about, it would be one of the other core PP asset classes. I have no problem buying gold when its price is going down. After all, it's part of the plan. I do have severe doubts when Craig says that he wouldn't buy European bonds. Now you may simply say: no ma...

It is always going to be a "bad time" to get into at least one of the PP assets, by default. That's how the system is designed: the PP accepts the damage done by the losing assets, but offsets those losses with the (usually) superior gains of the winning assets. The differential between th...

Wild west is right. I thought borrowers would legitimately be people looking for lower interest rates than you can get from banks, but I think a lot of them are scammers. Think of it this way: the only penalty for not repaying a loan is a 7 year, 100-200 point hit on your credit rating. That's sure...

For any Canadians out there looking to get into P2P lending, checkout LENDING LOOP So far I've put $25 into every loan they've posted since January (about 50) and I've yet to have a single late payment or charge-off. I'm fascinated by the technology [/b] of P2P lending, in the same way that I'm intr...

I saved this in notepad when I came across it somewhere in Bogleheads, but did not copy the URL.

PP In Iceland, 2008:

1. 25% LT Bonds: 0% 
2. 25% ST Bonds: 12% 
3. 25% Stocks: -88% 
4. 25% Gold: +259% 

Total PP: +46% 

If I have to abandon the PP, it is probably only because the financial system has seized, or collapsed altogether. In that case, my "exit strategy" is to simply write-off my 100% paper losses and sit on my physical gold holdings until the dust settles. In other words, the PP already comes ...

Today's 'Vault 7' release, 'Year Zero', is just the first in the series, and its already the greatest CIA leak in history. God knows what else will be revealed in subsequent releases. An observation: isn't it interesting that the only mention of the leak on CNN's website is buried in their 'Tech New...

Based on the OP, I'm going to speculate that Mark Leavy does not appear to understand the role that 'cash' plays in the HBPP. 'Cash' in the HBPP isn't just "spending money" that sits around and looks pretty. By removing it, your portfolio is suddenly subject to a range of risks and vulnera...

Wow, this thread (which I just discovered) is about as epic as the Bogleheads PP thread.

No way I'm going to be able to read through this one though, not unless I end up in full-traction at the hospital and have a few weeks to kill.

Yep. Although the NY Fed is supposed to have more gold than Fort Knox, I'm still curious: does the book to which you linked also purport that Fort Knox is empty? Or holding less than it says? I don't argue that Fort Knox or the NY Fed or US government vaults have no gold in their vaults, they obvio...

For what it's worth, the vault is open to tourists. I realize that it might not be easy (impossible) to count the stash, but the fact that it's open to the public means something to me. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5835433&page=1 Sounds like a good place for a gyro-investors get-toge...

No different than linking to a WSJ or NYT article: take with a grain silo of salt. Not that those publications are perfect - far from it - but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that comparison. Agreed, I didn't intend to hijack this thread and make it a debate about the state of contempora...

Conspiracy theory from a Russkie government "news" site. (sputnik) No different than linking to a WSJ or NYT article: take with a grain silo of salt. It does seem quite obvious that something was amiss from the beginning, though. When a significant US ally asks for their segregated gold t...

https://sputniknews.com/business/201702111050571970-us-germany-gold-repatriation/ There are a lot of signs that the gold was not physically presented in the New York vaults when Germany called it back. Of course, the US began to return it to Germany but there is one interesting detail. When you lea...

This article is insane in its casual acceptance of obvious absurdity. So apparently in our double-speak, anti-truth world it is now "obvious" that the path to sustained and durable wealth is that of issuing bonds that cost the owner to hold. This is an economic absurdity that even a six-ye...

mathjak107 wrote:gold has been more about timing the markets than time in the markets.

This is only true if you just buy a bunch of gold and sit on it. If you also hold an equally-weighted, negatively co-related asset in your portfolio, you can harvest capital gains from gold through re-balancing.