Gyroscopic Investing

Given the recent market issues, I have become tempted to predict the future with a variable portfolio play, but I am reminded that for the nearly 4 years that I have held a permanent portfolio, I have been happy that my variable portfolio is under 5% of my investments. How are you doing?

I'm not sure. I haven't factored in all the buying and selling I've done over all these years to get an accurate picture of my performance. Just going by the research I've done since becoming a boglehead and then a pp'er (a "Browney"?) I don't think my stocks will perform better than the vp over the long term. I trim individual stocks in my vp when stocks go up across the board. Needless to say, I've been busy this month and last.

I do get nearly US$20K in dividends every year from my vp, so I hope the pp continues to do well. I don't think I'm going to regret the strategy change.

Abysmal.

Then again, my entire VP is just 3 shares of Facebook bought on IPO day..

Doghouse territory.  That's mainly because of the small slice of Apple stock.  The rest of it is handily beating the PP, but it's not fair to separate it like that.

Down 15% YTD (since January).

Consists of Jan 2015 call options (initially at the money) for each

SPY, TLT and IAU.

It's the only VP I allow myself to have b/c it's the only thing I can think of that's mechanical enough to stick to (sell after a year and rebuy the 2016 options). 

It's fun to watch, but I'm not sure how profitable it will turn out to be.

I use a very small amount of money for this.