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Re: What us your current portfolio?

Posted: Mon Oct 28, 2019 9:01 pm
by stpeter
sophie wrote:
Mon Oct 28, 2019 6:41 am
jacksonm2 wrote:
Sun Oct 27, 2019 1:34 pm
I initially went all in with the PP in 2008 but transitioned to the GB about 3 years ago. The reason I did that was precisely for the reason people often warn about with the standard 4x4 - that it will be hard to stick with in times of prosperity when stocks are outperforming (hello Bud and Mathjak). The GB makes this much more palatable and if Tyler's charts are correct there is very little, if any, downside to it in comparison with the 4x4.
Similar story here. I started the PP in 2010 (first using PPRFX then switched to a 25x4 in 2012), then started moving to the Golden Butterfly about a year ago. My reason was different from Jackson's though - it's because historically, the eras where the PP is likely to outperform the GB are all less common historically than prosperity, whereas the GB's underperformance relative to the PP in other conditions is small. No VP. Active retirement accounts are a separate stock/bond portfolio.
Golden Butterfly indeed looks intriguing. What rebalance bands do you GB folks use?

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 9:42 am
by jhogue
Stocks 27% (mostly ITOT)
Bonds 23% (all 30 year T-bonds)
Gold 23% (mostly SGOL and IAU)
Cash 27% (divided between FDLXX /STTs/US savings bonds)

-No VP
-Annual Roth IRA conversions.

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Tue Oct 29, 2019 7:18 pm
by KevinW
My IRA is a 4x25 in ESGV, VGLT, VUSXX, GLDM, and some individual gold coins (since lost at sea ;D )

My 401k is essentially the same but uses the plan sponsor's cash and S&P500 funds.

Taxable cash is in an online savings account.

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 9:37 am
by amdda01

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 5:06 pm
by foglifter
I started PP in 2010, first it was all in PRPFX, then I moved to the classic PP, but eventually ended up with with a modified cashless version of GB:

25% FZROX
15% IJR
5% SCZ
5% DGS
30% FNBGX + individual LTTs
20% SGOL

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 5:34 pm
by Ugly_Bird
jalanlong wrote:
Sun Oct 27, 2019 5:14 am
I am interested to know from those who have been studying this a while, how many of you are still in the traditional vanilla 4x PP vs how many of you have done modifications (adding small caps or momentum etfs) or have changed your percentages entirely?
Classical 25x4 HBPP

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 8:03 pm
by AdamA
Regular PP for 9 peaceful years.

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Wed Oct 30, 2019 8:21 pm
by InsuranceGuy
[deleted]

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:43 pm
by escafandro
40 Stocks
40 Long Bond
20 Gold

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Thu Oct 31, 2019 9:50 pm
by Xan
Vanilla PP here. One PP for each tax regime.

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 7:43 am
by jalanlong
escafandro wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:43 pm
40 Stocks
40 Long Bond
20 Gold
May I ask what drew you to that portfolio?

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 9:05 am
by Kbg
jalanlong wrote:
Fri Nov 01, 2019 7:43 am
escafandro wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:43 pm
40 Stocks
40 Long Bond
20 Gold
May I ask what drew you to that portfolio?
It’s a very good mix historically.

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Fri Nov 01, 2019 8:57 pm
by escafandro
Kbg wrote:
Fri Nov 01, 2019 9:05 am
jalanlong wrote:
Fri Nov 01, 2019 7:43 am
escafandro wrote:
Thu Oct 31, 2019 7:43 pm
40 Stocks
40 Long Bond
20 Gold
May I ask what drew you to that portfolio?
It’s a very good mix historically.
Yes, that is the main reason.
As a foreigner from a peripheral country I cannot put together a local PP and I don't like the idea of ​​being overexposed to the dollar either.
Notice that I am quite improvised as an investor so my reasoning surely has some flaw, but I think that the PP has a low correlation to the dollar. Not always but in general my currency moves in positive correlation to gold.
Thereby when the dollar strengthens in my country my portfolio is probably going down and vice versa.
So I like this portfolio for its return prospects and for the correlation it has regarding the dollar and gold (a little softer in both cases than the PP and a little less reactive to exchange rate variation).

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Wed Nov 13, 2019 8:39 am
by tarentola
I am in the Eurozone. Retired, so even my VP (20% of total) is pretty conservative.

1. PP 4x25%
Stocks
50% individual Euro dividend shares (Sanofi, Vinci, Red Electrica, Renault, Air Liquide etc)
25% German Dax ETF (DAX from Lyxor)
12.5% each Nasdaq and Emerging Markets ETFs (ANX and AEEM from Amundi)

Bonds
About 50-50 long and medium Euro bond ETFs (MTH and MTD from Lyxor)

Gold
ETF (GBS from ETFS)

Cash
Mostly just cash, with some in a short 3-5y bond ETF (MTB from Lyxor)

2. VP
About 30 individual dividend shares, One-third sterling and Euro, two-thirds USA.
40% defensive sectors (consumer staples, utilities), 30% cyclic (materials, consumer discretionary), 30% other (energy, industry)
Includes Shell, Unilever, Volkswagen, Macdonalds, Procter and Gamble, Realty Income and other popular shares.


The PP is a bit complicated but this is partly for historical reasons: I had the Euro shares and some bond funds already and did not want to sell everything and start again. Not much dollar exposure in the PP, as there is plenty in the VP.

The VP yields just under 4% and is something of an experiment. When the next crash comes, I would hope that the dividend stream remains relatively unchanged even if the capital value goes down.

If I had my time over again, or if I decide to simplify matters, I would probably go for a PP with 40-40-20% Euro, US and Em Mkts, one long bond fund, one gold ETF such as SGOL, and cash on deposit and in some short bonds.

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 6:09 am
by fireplan
Long time lurker here, first time poster. While I started following Harry Browne's work more than 20 years, I have never held a strictly PP portfolio, but have nevertheless been strongly influenced by it. I try to diversify not just across asset classes, but also across strategies, to hopefully get a better risk adjusted return and higher perpetual withdrawal rate (PWR). I retired 3 years ago at the age of 40, so having a high theoretical PWR, but only utilizing some of it, is my goal to safeguard my (hopefully) long retirement period.

My overall portfolio is broken up into a few different buckets:

1. Core allocation in taxable account (about 45% of total assets)
- 20% VTI
- 20% VBR
- 20% GLDM
- 20% VGLT
- 20% VNQ
This is a GB inspired allocation, but with with real estate subbed info for cash. According to PortfolioCharts, this allocation has a higher PWR than all the other portfolios, and higher baseline short-term and long-term return averages. Obviously, without the cash, it will have higher volatility, but the higher return is enough to boost the PWR despite the increased volatility.

2. Tactical allocation in taxable account (about 20% of total assets).
This bucket follows Stoken’s Active Combined Asset Strategy (https://allocatesmartly.com/stokens-act ... -strategy/), which trades the same asset classes as above (except VBR), but buys and sells based on price channels. I like this tactical strategy because it reduces drawdowns (which are PWR killers) and volatility, while achieving a higher average return compared to buy-and-hold of the same assets. It is less tax efficient than buy-and-hold, but most taxable events are either LT cap gains, or ST losses.

Buckets 1 and 2 together have a backtested worst-case PWR of 6.3% and a real CAGR of 7.5%, but I'm targeting an actual withdraw rate closer to 4% for the next 10 years to reduce sequence of return risk.

3. IRA accounts (about 20% of total assets).
This bucket uses a combination of various strategies from https://allocatesmartly.com that have a low correlation to the core allocation and to each other, which hopefully reduces overall portfolio volatility. Since this happens in an IRA, there is no tax-drag from frequent (bi-monthly) allocation changes.

4. Private Real Estate investing (about 6% of total)
I'm unsure if this bucket is a useful diversifier or an unnecessary risky play.

5. Cash (current about 4% of total)
I keep about 1 year's worth of expenses (rather than a fixed % of the portfolio), mostly in VUSXX.

6. Other: HSA, 529, etc.
These small accounts are typically restricted in assets and trading, so they are mostly just balanced equity/bond funds.

If I ever get sick of the tactical stuff, or determine that it really doesn't add any value, then I have a fallback plan to just simplify as much as possible down to the Core portfolio allocation.

--FirePlan

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 8:07 am
by InsuranceGuy
[deleted]

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 8:45 am
by drumminj
fireplan wrote:
Thu Nov 14, 2019 6:09 am
My overall portfolio is broken up into a few different buckets:
Welcome! I'm curious, how much effort goes into maintaining all of this? One of the nice things about the HBPP is it's incredibly low-maintenance.

How much time do you spend maintaining your allocations in a given month?

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 10:46 am
by fireplan
drumminj wrote:
Thu Nov 14, 2019 8:45 am
fireplan wrote:
Thu Nov 14, 2019 6:09 am
My overall portfolio is broken up into a few different buckets:
Welcome! I'm curious, how much effort goes into maintaining all of this? One of the nice things about the HBPP is it's incredibly low-maintenance.

How much time do you spend maintaining your allocations in a given month?
Since I'm following the trade signals from AllocateSmartly for the tactical buckets, it literally only takes about 10 minutes, twice a month, to enter the trades. Everything else is passive.

However, I'm horrible at just stepping back and trusting things to run their course, and I spend way too much time thinking about, researching, and testing out asset allocations, tactical strategies, rebalancing strategies, drawdown strategies, market conditions, etc. That is a downside to not working full time anymore: too much time to think about these things! Fortunately, my usual conclusion after exploring some new idea is to just do nothing.

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 12:33 pm
by Smith1776
Current allocation, which I'm HOPING is now permanent -- it is the permanent portfolio after all, right? ;D :o

Digital PP:

25% T-bills
25% Long term government bonds
15% Gold
5% Silver
5% Total world market cap weight equity
5% Global value fund
5% Canadian SCV
5% U.S. SCV
5% International SCV
5% Emerging market SCV

Physical portion:
Gold and silver coins at 5% of the value of the digital part of the PP

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2019 7:37 pm
by InsuranceGuy
[deleted]

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Fri Nov 15, 2019 9:50 am
by Kbg
The very first investing book I ever read was the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, Buffet’s mentor, which has a section IIRC correctly concerning someone who just doesn’t want to get into value investing/do the work etc. For this kind of investor he recommended a 50/50 stock/bond portfolio...I can absolutely say if I would have just done this and stuck with it I’d be way better off than I am. I have pondered this fact many times.

This stuff IS fascinating which may be part of the problem...

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2019 4:23 am
by mathjak107
Since i am still holding all components of the pp i did a quick analysis of what my total portfolio's looks like .

the pp is the traditional 25% in each . so that is easy

the growth and income model consists of a combo of the 100% equity fidelity insight sector model coupled with the larry swedroe total bond portfolio which consists of 8 different bond etf's covering all segments of the bond market . kind of like the pp of bonds . it has 8 etf's that respond well to rising rates and rising inflation , they have others that respond to a weak dollar and some behave more conventionally . it holds everything from gov't bonds , to foreign bonds , both inflation protected and conventional .

as a whole that growth and income model model is 45% equities 52% bonds 3% cash

if i put both portfolios together they work out to 37% stock 41% bond 5% cash 18% gold

i have quite a bit of cash from some recent real estate sales so if i combine all models with the cash pile , including the cash in the pp model it looks like 27% equities 30% bonds 29% cash 13% gold .

so cash can be very variable as far as how to count it and the reason for having it and whether it is an active part of the portfolio with a specific job to do and whether or not it needs to be there . we may very well become snow birds and buy something down south so we don't count cash holdings in any portfolio except the pp since it is as active designed in component as the bonds and equities are . we can't put the pp cash in to a house as an example ..

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2019 7:37 pm
by ochotona
Currently have:

Equity 21% and most of that is an ex-US dividend ETF, DWX... a dividend-oriented Dual Momentum portfolio
Aggregate bonds 7% in retirement plans... poor choices, can't escape, you know how that goes
One of Paul Novell's tactical bond portfolios BONDCOMP 30%
Gold and miners 12%
Cash and ST Treasuries shorter than 2 years 30%, will push it all into Roth and I-Bonds over the next 5 years

PP "influenced". When this all goes risk-off, the above is going to morph into basically a PP with a small slice of equities, because BONDCOMP and DWX will go to IEF & SPTL.

Re: What is your current portfolio?

Posted: Wed Dec 04, 2019 5:03 am
by Hal
Kbg wrote:
Fri Nov 15, 2019 9:50 am
The very first investing book I ever read was the Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, Buffet’s mentor, which has a section IIRC correctly concerning someone who just doesn’t want to get into value investing/do the work etc. For this kind of investor he recommended a 50/50 stock/bond portfolio...I can absolutely say if I would have just done this and stuck with it I’d be way better off than I am. I have pondered this fact many times.

This stuff IS fascinating which may be part of the problem...
Agree with your thoughts on 50/50 stock/bond portfolio.

I run two PP's, one in taxable and one in a retirement (SMSF) account. Also VP in both containing 20% of total in Silver.

I consider the PP to be 1/2 investment as per Benjamin Graham and 1/2 Savings (cash and gold). Spoke to a few people who lived through the Australian Great Depression, Gold and Cash did better than Shares/Bonds sometimes.
https://www.firstlinks.com.au/australia ... nds-crisis