Gyroscopic Investing

...do you use any form of market timing?  I know, I know, the Permanent Portfolio frowns    on market timing, but I am talking about very very very short term timing.  E.g.  buying today vs. waiting a few days, or weeks.

Do anyone one use short-term technicals?
Does anyone avoid May-October timeframe  (sell in may, and go away)?
Does anyone use seasonality?
Does anyone wait till the price is under the 50day moving average?
Does anyone just follow the rebalancing bands and put their orders in the next trading day?
Does anyone have a list of rules (eg. wait until a day after any FOMC meeting, or the release of Employment rates, etc)?

Reached the point where its not worth worring about. The PP does all the worrying for me and consistently performs "as advertised". Buy all the assets at once and enjoy the peace of mind the portfolio affords the patient investor.

I will second that.  PP so far is very boring, which is what I needed.  I hope to continue to be bored, but with a slight upward bias...

No.

Market timing is for the VP. If you feel the desire to do this, why not set up a PP in your VP and try it there? Then in a year or two you see see what difference in performance, if any, was actually observed. I suspect the difference will be minuscule at best.

Pointedstick wrote: Market timing is for the VP. If you feel the desire to do this, why not set up a PP in your VP and try it there? Then in a year or two you see see what difference in performance, if any, was actually observed. I suspect the difference will be minuscule at best.

Yeah, I hear ya.  I guess I should of really asked, "When it is time to rebalance (or add a contribution like a work bonus), do you do the action right away, or do you postpone it for your favourite 'signal' "

Once I am fully invested, then I agree that these minor 'timings' probably won't matter or be significant, but it might ad some spice without being reckless.

It's funny but everytime I read a post by PointedStick, I hear Morgan Freeman's voice narrating...   (please take that as a compliment) 

"His first night in the joint, Andy Dufresne cost me two packs of cigarettes. He never made a sound. He rebalaced his Permanent Portfolio... and stayed silent."  - Shawshank Redemption.

Hah, everybody thinks he's Morgan Freeman! He is actually a Morgan, but not that Morgan:

http://sidmeiersalphacentauri.wikia.com ... Industries

As for what to do with lump sums, what I do is just spread it equally among the four assets if it's big enough (i.e. it's > 4x the current gold spot price) If it's smaller than that, I'll often just put it all in the asset that I currently hate the most. This is hard at first, but as others have said, once you've been in the PP for a while, you really start to let go of a lot of bad habits you've picked up from prior investment experiences. I used to market time my purchases too and always seemed to get the timing totally wrong. My performance is probably better now that I don't bother.

mgtow wrote:

Pointedstick wrote: Market timing is for the VP. If you feel the desire to do this, why not set up a PP in your VP and try it there? Then in a year or two you see see what difference in performance, if any, was actually observed. I suspect the difference will be minuscule at best.

It's funny but everytime I read a post by PointedStick, I hear Morgan Freeman's voice narrating...   (please take that as a compliment) 

"His first night in the joint, Andy Dufresne cost me two packs of cigarettes. He never made a sound. He rebalaced his Permanent Portfolio... and stayed silent."  - Shawshank Redemption.

Ha ha, me too that is just too funny. I am reading and hear morgan freeman's calm voice narrating the paragraph.

Pointedstick wrote: Hah, everybody thinks he's Morgan Freeman! He is actually a Morgan, but not that Morgan:

http://sidmeiersalphacentauri.wikia.com ... Industries

I wasn't sure who that was, but never pictured a video game character.  I have a new level of geeky respect.

When I started with the PP I still instinctively wanted to wait until the asset I was eying with new money fell a few percent.  Then I realized that even if I was unlucky on the timing I was really only talking about a difference of a few hundred bucks tops on a buy of several thousand dollars, and the next buy was just as likely to make that few hundred back.  So I just bought in and went back to playing video games in my spare time.

Tyler wrote: So I just bought in and went back to playing video games in my spare time.

Might I recommend http://www.gog.com/game/sid_meiers_alpha_centauri

Pointedstick wrote: ↑Sat Mar 22, 2014 4:20 pm Hah, everybody thinks he's Morgan Freeman! He is actually a Morgan, but not that Morgan:

http://sidmeiersalphacentauri.wikia.com ... Industries

As for what to do with lump sums, what I do is just spread it equally among the four assets if it's big enough (i.e. it's > 4x the current gold spot price) If it's smaller than that, I'll often just put it all in the asset that I currently hate the most. This is hard at first, but as others have said, once you've been in the PP for a while, you really start to let go of a lot of bad habits you've picked up from prior investment experiences. I used to market time my purchases too and always seemed to get the timing totally wrong. My performance is probably better now that I don't bother.

Last paragraph packed with solid advice!

Vinny

HAH! Holy shit I never knew PS's avatar was from Civ. I just started playing Civ VI in the past few days, and it's almost all I've done in the past few days. It's engrossing, like 4D chess, Risk, and Monopoly got smooshed together. Anyone else play?