Gyroscopic Investing

Google Books Ngram Viewer graphs and compares the historical usage of phrases based on the datasets comprised of more than 500 billion words and their associated volumes over time in about 5.2 million books.

While nothing more than a pointless exercise in observing the media of the times, here is the usage trend of Permanent Portfolio-related phrases between 1770-2008:


(Direct Link to Source)

Oddly enough, the usage of the word "Prosperity" in books has been on the decline since 1830.


(Direct Link to Source)

I found it interesting to see how much gold was mentioned back then. You can definitely see how much a part of daily life it must have been in terms of being money.

Heh.. Well, I suppose everything is relative. Bull and Bears seem to follow each other a lot



You inspired me to run a few other n-grams. I have to say, I was a bit troubled when I saw these:





Not good. That kind of turn towards pessimism will not help world economies.

I guess that's what they mean when they say "markets climb a wall of worry."