There are permanent portfolios and then there’s the Permanent Portfolio.
Devised decades ago by the late investing writer Harry Browne, it combines gold, stocks, long-term bonds and cash in equal proportions. The mix never varies and the investor’s only responsibility is to buy or sell once a year, as needed, to maintain the target allocation.
Sound too simple to work? Take a look at the results over the past few decades.
It's always interesting to read the comments to stories like that. Almost every comment I read at the end of that story reflects some level of misunderstanding about the way the PP works or the basic ideas on which it is based.
A pattern I have seen when people are presented with the PP concept is that they often instantly form an opinion about it based upon their own past investment experiences and it never occurs to them that there might be more to the PP than they initially suspected.
The PP is not the kind of thing that lends itself to instant judgments. I think that it's fine to decide that it's not for you, but I have never seen someone who was able to understand all of the PP's nuances based upon a casual review.
Q: “Do you have funny shaped balloons?”
A: “Not unless round is funny.”
