Goldman slashed its short- and long-term gold forecasts, a move that comes about six weeks after the firm had already turned even more bearish on the metal. Goldman now sees gold ending the year at $1,450, a forecast that came down from $1,600 at the end of February and $1,810 prior to that. Goldma...

D wrote: Isn't PP going down big time last few days?

At the moment the chart of the PP (GLD, TLT, SHY, VTI) shows it near the long term trend line:
http://etfreplay.com/combine.aspx

Odds are this is simply a pullback to the trend line and the trend will continue.

Clive: isn't a 33 day period too small of a sample to make conclusions from?  The 2x PP (DGP, UBT, SSO) has done pretty well over almost two years: 77% compared to 38% from GLD, TLT, VTI (no rebalancing).

What is criminal to me is that banks have inserted themselves in between merchants and customers and charge 3% for every transaction, for what is basically a very basic data service that should only cost a maximum of 10 cents per transaction.  Wouldn't it be nice if, rather than having to get some ...

Even if you look at gold in isolation it's still above its 200 day moving average and so far the trend is intact.  Based on its past behavior it'll probably recover soon.

An interesting analysis of stock market returns:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011 ... aphic.html

I'm posting this here because it shows how important reducing volatility is, which the Permanent Portfolio does quite well.

Clive wrote: I've just quickly knocked up an Excel version that's somewhat similar

I think its ok but I've only quickly tested it so make sure you're happy that it works ok before using it for real.

Thanks Clive.  Looks good.

I don't think Browne's idea was that the four assets would move in lockstep with their economic drivers.  Rather, I would state the Permanent Portfolio theory as "for any economic climate, at least one asset should perform well enough to carry the portfolio." For example, under deflation ...

* Then again everything can just kind of work out and stocks continue to post good gains on recovery. Which is why the portfolio holds all four assets all the time and doesn't attempt market timing. So basically you're saying we're in a confused environment which is why the performance of the four ...

From a recent blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20160324133409/http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2010/05/31/an-unknown-economic-climate/ Someone wanted to know: Are we sure there are no more than four economic investing climates that can affect the Permanent Portfolio? [....] What say you? Is there...

It's usually OK to trade a little early if it makes you feel more comfortable (say rebalancing at 20%/30% instead of 15%/35%). However trading too late can be a very costly mistake if the overweight asset crashes. Forgive me if this has been previously discussed, but has anyone back tested 20%/30% ...

Thanks for the replies.  I had a few incorrect assumptions such as the idea that the portfolio would be rebalanced annually even if none of the allocations are hitting the 15/35 bands.  I also assumed that the 15/35 bands would be hit several times a year. In Browne's Fail-Safe Investing book he sta...

What is recommended, rebalancing the portfolio as soon as one of the four categories is >35% or <15%, or rebalancing only annually?  Has anyone done any back testing to compare the two approaches?

TIA.