Gyroscopic Investing

I got my PP together around May of this year. New money comes in twice a year--October and April.  So now I have to decide--keep the October money in cash and do an annual rebalance around May after the April check?  Top up lagging assets now? The latter seems an odd move, with the amount of volatility we're seeing almost every day.  However, I'm quite overweighted in cash already.  No idea what to do.  Does it matter?  I don't feel urgency about either choice.   

Thanks for any and all ideas.

Buy your lagging assets. I like buying stuff on sale myself.

I agree with craigr.  Top up lagging assets is better because you minimize taxable events as well as trading costs.  Rebalancing is usually more expensive because of the trading costs involved.

You still get the benefit of buying low.  I just topped up gold earlier this week below $1600 an ounce!

craigr wrote: Buy your lagging assets. I like buying stuff on sale myself.

I think this one of the times you can pseudo-speculate with your PP.  For example, if I had a large amount of cash to contribute right now, I'd put at least some of it in gold, even though stocks are my lagging asset. That's because I think the recent price decline was just a temporary pullback.  I could easily be wrong.

Obviously, I would make this a relatively small amount (wouldn't want to push gold to a 35% rebalancing band).

craigr wrote: Buy your lagging assets. I like buying stuff on sale myself.

I think this one of the times you can pseudo-speculate with your PP.  For example, if I had a large amount of cash to contribute right now, I'd put at least some of it in gold, even though stocks are my lagging asset. That's because I think the recent price decline was just a temporary pullback.   I could easily be wrong...early.

Obviously, I would make this a relatively small amount (wouldn't want to push gold to a 35% rebalancing band).


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Thanks, Craig, Storm, and Adam.  Top it up it is, then.  I am tempted to buy a little gold--something pretty this time, like philharmonics maybe. So much nicer to look at than my Vanguard statement for TSM.

These last four months have been soooo interesting.  Can't wait to see what the rest of the year brings. 

Adam1226 wrote:

craigr wrote: Buy your lagging assets. I like buying stuff on sale myself.

I think this one of the times you can pseudo-speculate with your PP.  For example, if I had a large amount of cash to contribute right now, I'd put at least some of it in gold, even though stocks are my lagging asset. That's because I think the recent price decline was just a temporary pullback.   I could easily be wrong.

Obviously, I would make this a relatively small amount (wouldn't want to push gold to a 35% rebalancing band).

Huh? Speculate? How can you mention the PP and "speculate" (or psuedo-speculate... whatever that means?) at all in the same breath??  Heresy.

It's a very simple strategy to implement.  There's no speculation needed. 
If any of us had any reasonable ability to speculate successfully, we wouldn't need a system like the PP.