Peeking, and the Permanent Portfolio

[6 Iron]

It's impossible for me not to look.  It's just not gonna happen.  I make pretty regular purchases.

When I started, I did this, buying the lagging asset with monthly contributions and dividends. I now just put everything in cash/cash equivalents, and make asset purchases no more than a 1-2 times a year. I was using the frequent purchases as a justification for my frequent peeks; it was not improving my portfolio performance, just increasing gastric acid secretion.

[dualstow]

It's a great idea to not look more than once a month, quarter or year, but as I asked in another thread, how will I know it's time to rebalance?
I get some emails triggered by major stock market movements, but I don't know how to set this up for the other assets.
Could someone please wake me when gold drops below 1200?

[6 Iron]

The timing of rebalancing is imprecise at best, and the trends that caused the need for rebalancing can always continue, making it impossible to know when is the best time to rebalance. So we use rebalancing bands, but these are guidelines for our own risk tolerance, not crystal balls. In my portfolio, asset valuation changes have been gradual enough that I have never checked and been shocked at how out of balance an asset was. My sense is that if something drastic happened (gold plummets to $500/oz, or the market loses 50% in one day, or LT bond yields go up to 8%), I would hear about it on the news and be able to react accordingly.

I check my balance sheet infrequently, but I still read the newspaper. It is not like I have been unaware of the current bull market in equities.

[annieB]

Can't believe how far gold can fall and not hit my 15% rebalance.
Now at 19.08%,VTI at 32.35%.

At my age,I check my numbers every Friday afternoon..

[dragoncar]

It's a great idea to not look more than once a month, quarter or year, but as I asked in another thread, how will I know it's time to rebalance?
I get some emails triggered by major stock market movements, but I don't know how to set this up for the other assets.
Could someone please wake me when gold drops below 1200?

You can make a tracking spreadsheet like this one and hide the cells with scary info:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub ... utput=html

edit: use google docs and the function =googlefinance("symbol","price") to grab real time prices

[Tyler]

I enjoy applying my nervous intellectual energy that Cowboyhat describes to spending less rather than investing. It's another side of financial optimization that I have far more control over.