It's my rough guess, but I'll bet it's very close to what 100% TLT would give you. If it's different, it's not by much.foglifter wrote: Is the 50/50 allocation just your rough guess or something calculated?
In my view, EDV is a great way of taking an intermediate term bond fund (which is what most 401(k) plans offer) and using it to fill out the LT treasury part of the PP.
Obviously, this approach is less than ideal, but if you have significant assets in your 401(k) account and don't have access to a brokerage window, you have to do the best you can with what you've got.
On a somewhat related note, I thought it was comical earlier this year when everyone got all worked up about the government forcing everyone to invest their 401(k) accounts in long term government bonds. For some reason, no one seemed to notice that virtually no 401(k) plan provides ANY type of treasury fund (short term or long term), and that for a balanced portfolio such an option would actually reduce risk. It seems to me that the government could simply mandate that 401(k) plans offer a treasury fund OPTION if it wanted to use 401(k) plans as a way of selling more debt. No confiscation needed.
The "taking over your 401(k) accounts" concern is sort of like the "government is going to take my gold" argument--there is simply no point in the government seizing an asset when it can just buy it by printing more fiat currency.
