GLD in 401 K

[jwart]

I have multiple portfolios spread across retirement and non retirement accounts comprising my master PP.

Recently, GLD has been provided as an option in my company's  401k.

I currently have about 20 % of my gold allocation in GLD spread across both retirement and non retirement accounts.

My plan  is to transfer all GLD irrespective of location into the 401k and transfer long term treasuries and TLT held in non retirement accounts into my retirement accounts ( roth) and harvest some tax losses in the process.

Any constructive critiques, alternate strategies/approaches/viewpoints will be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[Pointedstick]

If you can make a PP in your 401k, that's great. I recommend making a full PP inside of it to ease rebalancing. If you have half or a quarter of a PP in your 401k, what are you going to to when you need to take profits from a 401k asset and allocate them to a loser in your Roth IRA or taxable account? Or sell some of an asset in one of those accounts and add the money to your 401k if you're already maxed it out for the year?

It's much less of a nightmare to just make a separate PP in each account type. This is what I do. I have a PP in my 401k, a PP in my taxable account, and my wife any my Roth IRAs comprise the VP (more stocks)

[jwart]

I have all the needed parts outside of a long term treasury option to create a complete PP inside the 401k. The closest fixed income option will be the Pimco Total Return Fund ( PTTRX) and that will be not be an adequate subsitute.

Alternatively, I can have the long term treasury outside the 401k in my roth with 1/3 of applicable cash for re balancing purposes and the other components within the 401k.

[sophie]

Recently, GLD has been provided as an option in my company's  401k.

Lucky you!!!!

PointedStick's approach of a separate PP in each account (where possible) is eminently sensible and simple.  I personally like to spread things around between different types of accounts including taxable.  Having some GLD is convenient for rebalancing and may also make it possible to include all your retirement portfolio in a PP.  But, it's really really important to have at least some physical gold in taxable, if you can swing it.

Using your Roth for long bonds is fine.  You might want to split long bonds between the Roth and taxable accounts for two reasons:  1) you can harvest tax losses if bond values go down/interest rates go up, and 2) you can put some other assets into the Roth, so that your Roth won't evaporate if bonds do badly.

Finally, this approach lets you keep a chunk of your cash allocation in taxable.  If your portfolio is large enough, this serves quite well as an emergency fund.