Golden Butterfly Portfolio

A place to talk about speculative investing ideas for the optional Variable Portfolio

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ppnewbie
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by ppnewbie » Fri Apr 24, 2020 12:45 am

Here is a post from Tyler regarding recent drawdowns if the GB and HBPP.

https://portfoliocharts.com/2020/03/23/ ... ful-month/

My Modified GB went down around 9%.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by vnatale » Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:24 pm

mathjak107 wrote:
Thu Nov 19, 2015 8:56 am
no one knows what to expect this  time around . these are uncharted times with things right now so i would trust nothing but real time monitoring .

could we have a decade of rising rates back to the historic norms ?  could stocks be dead another 15 years and could gold go no where but down with rising rates ?

all very possible so any spending down plan needs a plan B .  WHICH MEANS Access to another level of just slightly more volatile assets once cash runs low . .

i wouldn't want plan b to have to decide whether to take a beating on gold , stocks or those long term volatile treasury's .

more and more i like what i see when running simulations with the various types of income annuty's as a base . but we are still a bit to young and rates to low for laddering them .

the new fidelity retirement planner has simulations you can add with various annuity types .

if someone is not retiring today or in the short term , this may all go away and resolve . but with the first 5 years of ones retirement being especially crucial  before the cushion of a run up there are no do overs if things do not go as planned  .

i had a very comprehensive consultation with my team at fidelity on monday and gave them lots of homework .  they are running all kinds of simulations for me with various social security points , pulling from  different  types of accounts and using various annuity products . 

we were supposed to meet again  on monday but they needed more time so i will report back .
1) Do you agree with what I once read that an insurance company annuity is not different than buying a bond from that insurance company. If you agree, would buy a direct bond offering from any insurance company?

2) I don't believe that you ever reported back.

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by Tortoise » Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:48 pm

I'd just like to take this opportunity to say I'm thankful that you're not an IRS agent, Vinny. If you were assigned to audit all of my old tax returns, I'd be in a world of pain. ;)
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by vnatale » Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:56 pm

Tortoise wrote:
Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:48 pm
I'd just like to take this opportunity to say I'm thankful that you're not an IRS agent, Vinny. If you were assigned to audit all of my old tax returns, I'd be in a world of pain. ;)
A business for which I was its financial person underwent an IRS audit. The person they sent was with us for three days. At the end of the three days, he issued a "No Findings" report and told me that he could on his first day there that he was not going to find anything.

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by Tortoise » Fri Apr 24, 2020 5:36 pm

vnatale wrote:
Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:56 pm
A business for which I was its financial person underwent an IRS audit. The person they sent was with us for three days. At the end of the three days, he issued a "No Findings" report and told me that he could on his first day there that he was not going to find anything.
CEO: "Yo Vinny, we got ourselves a bit of a problem here. Some inquisitive IRS agent has been sniffin' around, and I don't like it. Why don't you make the problem, you know... go away?"

Vinny: "I'm on it, boss. You just rest easy."
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by vnatale » Fri May 01, 2020 6:18 pm

mathjak107 wrote:
Thu Nov 19, 2015 5:43 am
that is the issue spending down from the pp.

all well and good you have 25% cash but now that you spent it down  below your rebalance point you have to rebalance and refill selling volatile assets . it may be  no different from leaving the cash and spending it down equally from the  other parts  right from the get go ..

in a typical bucket system you exhaust the cash , then refill from short and  intermediate term bonds which are no where near as volatile as stocks would be like long term bonds are. finally many years later sell equity's to refill bonds and cash

so instead of refilling from short and intermediate term  bonds which may be down a little you are selling long term bonds which are  something as volatile as the stocks  or selling stocks or gold which run an equal chance of being down as much you are trying to avoid selling at a bad time .

with the pp you do not really have a non volatile 2nd line of defense to draw from if rates rise . .

i think anyone spending down from the pp has to examine this and find away to provide a secondary source for spending without selling assets as volatile as stocks are .

perhaps an income annuity may add time to allow other assets to  at least recover before they are needed  and prolong rebalancing to cash .

i don't know , how it would shake out as i never looked at the pp in that regard .
Follow all you say here....however the part of "later sell equity's"....why "many years later"?

What if the cash bucket has depleted and there is also not much left in the next bucket and you have to sell equities? Are you not in the same position as regarding your criticism of the Permanent Portfolio System.

My understanding of the bucket system is that you have 3 years worth of spending in the cash bucket, 5 years in the next bucket, with the remainder in equities. And, as each year goes by you have to shift from the higher bucket to the lower bucket. Therefore, isn't the bucket system even worse in that it's guaranteed selling of equities each year while the Permanent Portfolio system is, on the average, once every two years?

Vinny
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by mathjak107 » Fri May 01, 2020 6:27 pm

vnatale wrote:
Fri May 01, 2020 6:18 pm
mathjak107 wrote:
Thu Nov 19, 2015 5:43 am
that is the issue spending down from the pp.

all well and good you have 25% cash but now that you spent it down  below your rebalance point you have to rebalance and refill selling volatile assets . it may be  no different from leaving the cash and spending it down equally from the  other parts  right from the get go ..

in a typical bucket system you exhaust the cash , then refill from short and  intermediate term bonds which are no where near as volatile as stocks would be like long term bonds are. finally many years later sell equity's to refill bonds and cash

so instead of refilling from short and intermediate term  bonds which may be down a little you are selling long term bonds which are  something as volatile as the stocks  or selling stocks or gold which run an equal chance of being down as much you are trying to avoid selling at a bad time .

with the pp you do not really have a non volatile 2nd line of defense to draw from if rates rise . .

i think anyone spending down from the pp has to examine this and find away to provide a secondary source for spending without selling assets as volatile as stocks are .

perhaps an income annuity may add time to allow other assets to  at least recover before they are needed  and prolong rebalancing to cash .

i don't know , how it would shake out as i never looked at the pp in that regard .
Follow all you say here....however the part of "later sell equity's"....why "many years later"?

What if the cash bucket has depleted and there is also not much left in the next bucket and you have to sell equities? Are you not in the same position as regarding your criticism of the Permanent Portfolio System.

My understanding of the bucket system is that you have 3 years worth of spending in the cash bucket, 5 years in the next bucket, with the remainder in equities. And, as each year goes by you have to shift from the higher bucket to the lower bucket. Therefore, isn't the bucket system even worse in that it's guaranteed selling of equities each year while the Permanent Portfolio system is, on the average, once every two years?

Vinny
In practice each bucket is refilled over those years as assets are in a good position to do so ....

In practice one system uses 7 years safe money in bucket 1 ...that is basically cash instruments and annuities as well as other income sources ...bucket 2 has 7 years in assorted bond funds , income funds , reit income ,etc , durations are matched to need ———bucket 3 is equities ......

You have as much as 15 years before equities need to be sold ..... you likely don’t want to spend down buckets 1 and 2 and be 100% equities at age 80 prior to refilling .....so users tend to refill at different points along the way
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by LittleDinghy » Fri May 01, 2020 7:50 pm

Last night I just did my end-of-month adding up of our GB portfolio (our whole nest egg for retirement - 2-1/2 years away for me and 7 years away for my spouse) and was pleasantly surprised to find it had hit a new high, a little larger but essentially the same as its previous high the end of January (I usually only check at month-end). And we never quite hit a re-balancing limit and the only change was the automated paycheck additions to the equity part of our portfolio over Feb, Mar and April, which over the three months is probably not more than 1% of portfolio value (I'll check this weekend). The lowest value I calculated over the last three months (on March 21) was down about 11.8% as compared to our previous highest value ever at the end of Jan.

I have at best a surface understanding of how all this works but my spouse and I are so appreciative of Harry Browne, Craig Rowland, J.M. Lawson and Tyler for making this sufficiently understandable that even we, as ignorant as we are about investing, could implement it. Also, I'm so appreciative of this forum, especially Sophie, pmward, and Smith1776, for their responses to my and other's questions that have helped us so much.

For grins, below are some charts of our portfolio dynamics from Jan 31, the previous maximum value of our portfolio. Looking at the charts it seems that LTTs and gold increased in value enough from 1/31 to 3/20 or thereabouts to partially offset the equity losses during that period. And then as equity values have risen since 3/20 or thereabouts, LTT and gold values have held their values sufficiently such that they, in combination with the equity increases in value since 3/20 have enabled the entire portfolio to recover all of its losses from 1/31 to 3/20.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by gull1 » Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:07 am

I know this is the cardinal sin but anyone else thinking about switching back to PP from GB? I am just having a hard time seeing how stocks are going to perform much better in the upcoming several years in real terms. They'll prob go sideways. Then again, they seem to be doing OK and the world is a basket case, so is there all upside? My gut tells me the current stock market is a potemkin village.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by mathjak107 » Thu Jun 04, 2020 6:21 pm

I run the pp and I run a 25% equity model of another type too ..I am holding for now at the 25% level in both
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by pp4me » Thu Jun 04, 2020 7:01 pm

gull1 wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:07 am
I know this is the cardinal sin but anyone else thinking about switching back to PP from GB? I am just having a hard time seeing how stocks are going to perform much better in the upcoming several years in real terms. They'll prob go sideways. Then again, they seem to be doing OK and the world is a basket case, so is there all upside? My gut tells me the current stock market is a potemkin village.
Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention.

I switched from the pure PP to the GB a few years back because it seemed like a good idea looking at Tyler's chart when stocks were doing well. Will that turn out to be a bad decision in the long run based on current events?

How the hell do I know and neither do you or any of the "experts". I try to make it a habit not to look at my portfolio very often but when I do I see that SCV is not doing so well right now. Is that going to hold true in the future? Again, how the hell do I know? My attitude is that you just make the best decisions you can based on available information at the time. What more can you really do?
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by whatchamacallit » Thu Jun 04, 2020 9:53 pm

By my calculations IWN is up 40% from its lows this year.

I was moving slowly into GB and I have been buying SCV because it was my lagging asset. I have made some nice percentage gains on my latest contributions because of this.

I was so close to hitting a re balance band right before it reversed course going back up. I was about back up the truck and missed it.

I will keep buying it while it is my lagging asset.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by gull1 » Fri Jun 05, 2020 6:51 am

pp4me wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 7:01 pm
gull1 wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:07 am
I know this is the cardinal sin but anyone else thinking about switching back to PP from GB? I am just having a hard time seeing how stocks are going to perform much better in the upcoming several years in real terms. They'll prob go sideways. Then again, they seem to be doing OK and the world is a basket case, so is there all upside? My gut tells me the current stock market is a potemkin village.
Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention.

I switched from the pure PP to the GB a few years back because it seemed like a good idea looking at Tyler's chart when stocks were doing well. Will that turn out to be a bad decision in the long run based on current events?

How the hell do I know and neither do you or any of the "experts". I try to make it a habit not to look at my portfolio very often but when I do I see that SCV is not doing so well right now. Is that going to hold true in the future? Again, how the hell do I know? My attitude is that you just make the best decisions you can based on available information at the time. What more can you really do?
Found this random article which seems reassuring https://osam.com/Commentary/a-historic- ... -small-cap
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by Tyler » Fri Jun 05, 2020 10:40 am

whatchamacallit wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 9:53 pm
I was moving slowly into GB and I have been buying SCV because it was my lagging asset. I have made some nice percentage gains on my latest contributions because of this.
Anyone continuing to buy SCV in the downswing is feeling pretty good today. (It's up about 5.5% as I write this). 8)

But in all seriousness, no matter how you invest I think it's important to find a portfolio you're comfortable sticking with through both good times and bad. Constantly second-guessing yourself will make you miserable and will likely also cost you money in the long run as you repeatedly change strategies. Pick a good plan, let it do its thing, and focus your energy on saving more. You'll be a lot happier and wealthier in the long run!
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by pmward » Fri Jun 05, 2020 12:07 pm

pp4me wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 7:01 pm
gull1 wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:07 am
I know this is the cardinal sin but anyone else thinking about switching back to PP from GB? I am just having a hard time seeing how stocks are going to perform much better in the upcoming several years in real terms. They'll prob go sideways. Then again, they seem to be doing OK and the world is a basket case, so is there all upside? My gut tells me the current stock market is a potemkin village.
Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention.

I switched from the pure PP to the GB a few years back because it seemed like a good idea looking at Tyler's chart when stocks were doing well. Will that turn out to be a bad decision in the long run based on current events?

How the hell do I know and neither do you or any of the "experts". I try to make it a habit not to look at my portfolio very often but when I do I see that SCV is not doing so well right now. Is that going to hold true in the future? Again, how the hell do I know? My attitude is that you just make the best decisions you can based on available information at the time. What more can you really do?
You obviously haven't looked at things this week. SCV is up over 15% this week alone...
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by sophie » Fri Jun 05, 2020 12:18 pm

And it's up 20% since I rebalanced. And my GB is up over 4%.

I was a bit terrified to be buying such a crazy amount of SCV at the time. It always goes against the grain to buy low and sell high - almost by definition it's the opposite of what everyone else is doing, and thus what every bone in your body is telling you to do. This is what's happening to you now, pp4me.

But, as hard as it is, it's exactly what you need to do to succeed in the investing game. If you can't do it, you're better off buying a single target date/lifestrategy/balanced fund and forgetting the whole portfolio maintenance bit. Jumping between portfolios trying to chase returns is a really bad idea. It's just another way to buy high and sell low.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by pmward » Fri Jun 05, 2020 12:34 pm

sophie wrote:
Fri Jun 05, 2020 12:18 pm
And it's up 20% since I rebalanced. And my GB is up over 4%.

I was a bit terrified to be buying such a crazy amount of SCV at the time. It always goes against the grain to buy low and sell high - almost by definition it's the opposite of what everyone else is doing, and thus what every bone in your body is telling you to do. This is what's happening to you now, pp4me.

But, as hard as it is, it's exactly what you need to do to succeed in the investing game. If you can't do it, you're better off buying a single target date/lifestrategy/balanced fund and forgetting the whole portfolio maintenance bit. Jumping between portfolios trying to chase returns is a really bad idea. It's just another way to buy high and sell low.
Human psychology really is setup to buy high and sell low. All successful investing/trading strategies are all about different ways to counter or minimize this one fundamental flaw we all possess. It really is the hardest and most unnatural thing in the world to buy low and sell high.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by Kevin K. » Sat Jun 06, 2020 11:51 am

A chorus of wise advice here I must say - or rather, ruefully admit, since I sold my SCV at a loss a few weeks back and reverted to the PP from the GB. My (dubious) "logic" was that the GB tilt towards prosperity makes sense almost all the time, with a global pandemic being an obvious exception. And we all know what's been happening to the stock market in general and SCV in particular in recent days.

I am probably one of those people who ought to have just put everything into Wellesley or Vanguard Target Retirement Income and called it a day. But I still believe in the logic behind the PP and GB and am just going to stop looking at the markets so often. I have a feeling I'm far from alone in letting too much time indoors and online during this lockdown lead to way too much news consumption - including financial "porn" from CNBC and the like that I used to know better than to read.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by Tyler » Sat Jun 06, 2020 12:09 pm

Kevin K. wrote:
Sat Jun 06, 2020 11:51 am
I have a feeling I'm far from alone in letting too much time indoors and online during this lockdown lead to way too much news consumption - including financial "porn" from CNBC and the like that I used to know better than to read.
You're definitely not alone. We're all human. And cabin fever affects us all in different ways.

When it comes to portfolio jitters, taking a break from the news definitely helps. Writing down the reasons you invested in something so that you can refer to it later also comes in handy. And maybe most importantly, I have a hard rule that I never trade when I'm overly excited or fearful. Things almost never work out the way you think they will when you're worked up.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by sophie » Sat Jun 06, 2020 3:02 pm

Kevin, don't beat yourself up about it. It's understandable. Rebalancing my GB was simple in terms of entering orders, but psychologically I had to really force myself to do it.

This forum is an invaluable support group - if you're feeling those sort of jitters, help is just one post away. In retrospect, we should have had a thread entitled "Rebalancing Support Room" or something like that.

Watch old Harry Potter movies, or the Indiana Jones flicks, or old Star Trek reruns. Anything but cable news. I was devouring that in the first few weeks and tracking reported COVID cases, but eventually I realized I was simply letting not so smart people parrot their latest stupid ideas into my head. Don't let that happen! (Also the fun part about old movies & shows: count how many times a character says or does something that would get them arrested today. Even in the socially liberal Star Trek next generation shows, that was about 1-2 times per episode.)
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by pmward » Sat Jun 06, 2020 3:21 pm

Kevin K. wrote:
Sat Jun 06, 2020 11:51 am
A chorus of wise advice here I must say - or rather, ruefully admit, since I sold my SCV at a loss a few weeks back and reverted to the PP from the GB. My (dubious) "logic" was that the GB tilt towards prosperity makes sense almost all the time, with a global pandemic being an obvious exception. And we all know what's been happening to the stock market in general and SCV in particular in recent days.

I am probably one of those people who ought to have just put everything into Wellesley or Vanguard Target Retirement Income and called it a day. But I still believe in the logic behind the PP and GB and am just going to stop looking at the markets so often. I have a feeling I'm far from alone in letting too much time indoors and online during this lockdown lead to way too much news consumption - including financial "porn" from CNBC and the like that I used to know better than to read.
The stock market performs the BEST going forward when the news is the worst and people are the most fearful. It performs the WORST when the news is the best and people are the most excited about the market/economy. Really let that sink in and digest for awhile. Most people refuse to accept this, and this is why their behavior causes them to habitually underperform. I know because I've been there myself.

Warren Buffet isn't Warren Buffet because he is a "value investor". His methodology is not what made him successful at all. People that try to worship and copy his methodology are missing the boat entirely. He has become as successful as he is purely because he has super human levels of discipline. When the media are fear mongering and fear is at extremes he is the only person in the room putting large sums of money into the markets. When we are in a meltup and the media is saying there is nowhere to go but up, he is the only person in the room sitting on a pile of cash. This is not natural, and it is not easy at all. Matter of fact, it's almost impossible for anyone to do this.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by mathjak107 » Sat Jun 06, 2020 4:35 pm

It also has given him pretty poor returns now for 15 years compared to many mutual funds ...I mean fidelity contra beat Berkshire every time frame the last 15 years ....what ever he had, that mojo seems to be gone for a long time .

The poor choices he made the last decade in investments is pretty bad
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by Kevin K. » Sat Jun 06, 2020 5:26 pm

sophie wrote:
Sat Jun 06, 2020 3:02 pm
Kevin, don't beat yourself up about it. It's understandable. Rebalancing my GB was simple in terms of entering orders, but psychologically I had to really force myself to do it.

This forum is an invaluable support group - if you're feeling those sort of jitters, help is just one post away. In retrospect, we should have had a thread entitled "Rebalancing Support Room" or something like that.

Watch old Harry Potter movies, or the Indiana Jones flicks, or old Star Trek reruns. Anything but cable news. I was devouring that in the first few weeks and tracking reported COVID cases, but eventually I realized I was simply letting not so smart people parrot their latest stupid ideas into my head. Don't let that happen! (Also the fun part about old movies & shows: count how many times a character says or does something that would get them arrested today. Even in the socially liberal Star Trek next generation shows, that was about 1-2 times per episode.)
Thank you Sophie for your kind words, Tyler for the same and for your brilliant work on Portfolio Charts, and pmward for your consistently insightful posts.

As you say Sophie this forum is indeed an invaluable support group, and I'm certainly going to take advantage of it before making any future moves. I learn so much from all of you. I'm most grateful.
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by Kevin K. » Sat Jun 06, 2020 5:43 pm

Another question for GB fans here is to what extent people consider it heretical to use something other than SCV for the second 20% of the stock allocation. I understand Tyler's well thought-out recommendation of SCV or SCB as complementing the TSM allocation. And he has mentioned that perhaps a slice of international could be OK, but not really needed in a portfolio that holds 20% gold.

The sea change (if that's not too dramatic a phrase) I'm seeing is captured in this recent NY Times article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/busi ... tocks.html

The trends talked about in that article, which is from late April, have only increased since. Even my least-favorite stock market talking head seems to get this one right:

"The coronavirus pandemic and corresponding lockdown made way for “one of the greatest wealth transfers in history,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Thursday.

The stock market is rising as big business rebounds from state-ordered stoppage of nonessential activity, while small businesses drop like flies, the “Mad Money” host said.

“The bigger the business, the more it moves the major averages, and that matters because this is the first recession where big business … is coming through virtually unscathed, if not going for the gold,” he added."

So the juxtaposition I'm seeing is mainstream firms like Vanguard and DFA predicting that international and value are going to soar based purely on valuations (as they've been predicting - incorrectly - for many years now) while the NYT article is talking about STRUCTURAL changes to the stock markets that got underway during the Great Recession and have been launched into hyperspace by the pandemic. It kind of looks like QQQ might be a better call than VBR going forward.

Thoughts?
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Re: Golden Butterfly Portfolio

Post by Tyler » Sat Jun 06, 2020 9:19 pm

Kevin K. wrote:
Sat Jun 06, 2020 5:43 pm
So the juxtaposition I'm seeing is mainstream firms like Vanguard and DFA predicting that international and value are going to soar based purely on valuations (as they've been predicting - incorrectly - for many years now) while the NYT article is talking about STRUCTURAL changes to the stock markets that got underway during the Great Recession and have been launched into hyperspace by the pandemic. It kind of looks like QQQ might be a better call than VBR going forward.
I understand the argument that current conditions may disproportionately harm small caps. But there's more to the structural makeup of the stock market than company size.

For reference, the thing that eventually pushed me over the top on my own SCV vs SCB debate (I settled on SCV) was when I realized just how different the sector makeup is for SCV vs LCB. Large caps are dominated by tech and healthcare, while small cap value is heavily weighted towards financials and industrials (SCB is a lot more similar to LCB in sector makeup than you'd think). Balance them equally and you get a nice amount of sector diversification on top of the other economic diversification in the portfolio.

Will tech and healthcare do better than financials and industrials in the near term? Sure - it's very possible. But having my bases covered in a methodical rebalancing structure gives me the confidence to stick with the plan no matter what industry takes the lead next.
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