Gyroscopic Investing

One very big hidden feature of the Golden Butterfly is that it helps people unfamiliar with the concepts of the HBPP portfolio ease into it. As a person who has invested in stocks my entire adult life without even thinking of gold, bonds, and cash, the GB helped me make the leap.

Now I can decide if I want to tweak closer to a classic HBPP or stay GB. Either way I have a much higher margin of comfort and countervailing forces keeping my 401k steady. If it wasn't for the guidance and scaffolding of Tyler's writings, I don't know if I would have created this portfolio on my own. I would have thought more binary. HBPP or something else (Bogleheadish).

For sure, it's never binary. There's an infinite variety of portfolios.

I've found it really helpful to go back and skim the original thread here on the Golden Butterfly in some detail:

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7700

Desert's contributions there and his thinking about portfolios in general as well as (of course) Tyler's numerous contributions are really illuminating. The GB is a brilliant "tweak" or iteration of the PP but I think that for most folks coming from the Bogleheads/plain vanilla portfolio camp 20% gold is probably just as much of a deal-breaker as 25%. That's why, in my opinion anyway, the "Commentary" part of the Portfolio Charts site is at least as valuable as the portfolio section. Sharing this post of Tyler's with friends has been really well-received:

https://portfoliocharts.com/2015/09/22/ ... butterfly/

Of course people ought to read Harry Browne or the wonderful Rowland/Lawson book on the PP, but Tyler does a masterful job of distilling things to their essence so that stock-and-bond-only folks can begin to see the logic of allocations that are based on responding to macroeconomic conditions rather than just backtesting.

I'm happy to hear you guys find value in the articles.

Leading people to understand a new concept to the point where they embrace it over their own preconceptions is actually really hard. So I consider it a high compliment!

The Golden Butterfly is basically a mirror image of PRPFX.

Think of PRPFX as the PP but with a tilt towards inflation. Similarly, think of The Golden Butterfly as the PP but with a tilt towards prosperity.

GB is a 60/40 tilt to " You may live in interesting times".

"Just" taking 20% from sticks to gold...

And trading total bond for Treasuries.