Recovering GoldBug

[Cortopassi]

A question to all who may have been in my shoes. 

I am fully invested in the PP for almost a year now, after having been majorly into gold, silver and miners since the crash in 2008.  I can handle watching TLT, VTI and the dollar go up and down without issue.

But gold seemingly going sideways/down for years now is much more difficult to handle.  Why?  How do I mentally break gold into simply another 25% asset and stop this mental stressing?  Gold down=bad day.  Gold up=good day.  Bad way to live life, esp. since the PP was meant to change that day to day stress.

Thanks.

[stuper1]

Gold down = bad day ? 

I have some advice for you:  get a life. 

Maybe find a new hobby.  Try to get more exercise.  Maybe do both at the same time.  Ever played pickleball?

[MachineGhost]

Unless you're a full time investor or trader, stop looking at your portfolio.  It serves no useful purpose other to make you bipolar.  Ignorance is the best offense in this case.

[Cortopassi]

Completely agree.  Thanks for the advice.  If I had started the PP 20 years ago, I would not have ever gotten into this mental state!

[Mike59]

But gold seemingly going sideways/down for years now is much more difficult to handle.  Why?  How do I mentally break gold into simply another 25% asset and stop this mental stressing?  Gold down=bad day.  Gold up=good day.  Bad way to live life, esp. since the PP was meant to change that day to day stress.

I'm no financial advisor, but maybe you have too much allocated to gold relative to what your stomach can handle?
Would those down days be more tolerable if gold was say, 10% of the portfolio, 5%, 2%!? In theory gold being beaten down is a good thing, so you can accumulate more of it before the next bull. You know that logically I'm sure...

Given your emotional attachment is so strong (and dangerous I would argue), and its causing so much distress, you may need alternative arrangements to save your sanity. Per my other thread I'm OCD about checking kitco several times per day, selling out silver and miners and going to the PP 25% x 4 format alleviated most of my emotional ups and downs. I get the sense you need something less volatile, or less gold in that category. 

I wish you the best in finding a way around this!

[Kbg]

You bought a portfolio...read The definition of a financial portfolio. If you're going to look at anything just look at the bottom line.

[ochotona]

I am easing into this thing, I have 15% gold. Probably in a few years I'll have 25%. I'll feel better next year when I will be able to have some gold coins in my safe, and not only ETFs. 25% would stress me out too much at this time.

[Mark Leavy]

CraigR has made the point several times that if he were ever to start a "Permanent Portfolio Hedge Fund", he would send out a statement every year to the investors with just the total Portfolio Annual returns in it.  Then... inside that envelope would be another super secret envelope labeled with something like "Open at your own risk!"  And that would contain the returns of the individual assets.

His point being that pretty much everyone gets overly worked up by the individual returns and forgets to evaluate the Permanent Portfolio as a system - much like any other investment fund.  When we buy VTI - we don't sweat Apple going up or down, we look at how VTI is doing...

[Cortopassi]

Very good point.

Of course, though, Apple never goes down anymore.    I worked at Palm, God I tell you that's frustrating looking back.  We had the market share, we were going in the right direction toward an app store and cell/smart phones -- a few poor management decisions later and all the buzzwords in TV shows went from "Palm Pilot" to "iPhone and iPad" practically in the blink of an eye.

[ochotona]

Oh wow, I had a PalmOS Handspring Visor in 2001, I loved it! Syncing everything back to my PC was SuperCool. I lost all that functionality until I broke down and got my Android phone in 2014.

Very good point.

Of course, though, Apple never goes down anymore.    I worked at Palm, God I tell you that's frustrating looking back.  We had the market share, we were going in the right direction toward an app store and cell/smart phones -- a few poor management decisions later and all the buzzwords in TV shows went from "Palm Pilot" to "iPhone and iPad" practically in the blink of an eye.

[AdamA]

CraigR has made the point several times that if he were ever to start a "Permanent Portfolio Hedge Fund", he would send out a statement every year to the investors with just the total Portfolio Annual returns in it.  Then... inside that envelope would be another super secret envelope labeled with something like "Open at your own risk!"  And that would contain the returns of the individual assets.

His point being that pretty much everyone gets overly worked up by the individual returns and forgets to evaluate the Permanent Portfolio as a system - much like any other investment fund.  When we buy VTI - we don't sweat Apple going up or down, we look at how VTI is doing...

Well said. 

There will almost always be one (or even two) assets that you just have to hold your nose a deal with.  You may even have to buy that asset!

The portfolio is designed to work this way.  The returns speak for themselves. 

If gold is giving you a hard time, just think how you'd feel if you didn't own it.  You'd have a nagging feeling that inflation was going to ruin your wealth at some point.