http://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-moves-t ... 1465205401

It seems regulators want to get rid of the 2x and 3x leveraged ETFs, capping leverage at 1.5x, per the 1940's Investment Act?

Does this kill this strategy?

Part of my family fled Latvia during the 2nd Soviet invasion in 1945.  The family farm (with some family members who chose to remain behind) was eventually soviet-ized, so obviously I'd cast a vote against farmland, as far as avoiding confiscation. One investment that isn't easily confiscated, is ed...

who cares what a long term investment does over the short term' Ahh..  Are you familiar with the problem of order of returns of a retirement portfolio?  With a steady drawdown to live off of, a few bad years at the start of a retirement period (which could range from ages 60-90, so a 30 year period...

I seem to remember reading that part of the problem is that the population in the Middle East has had their media controlled for so long, that they simply don't believe that its possible for a paper, or art exhibit publish, show, or say anything without the governments permission and approval. So to...

Acording to Wikipedia, $328 billion for US gold reserves is about right..  $8.2 Trillion is the value of all gold ever mined on the planet, but central banks only hold about 19% of that, and the US seems to have the largest holdings, at 8,133.5 tonnes of gold.. @ $1500/ounce, 1 tonne = $48.2 million...

You can quantify this without running that many sims.. The phenomina is called Volatility drag, and its the difference between arithmetic and geometric mean.. geometric return = arithmetic return - sigma^2/2 , where sigma is the volatility With 20% vol (typical for the stock market as a whole), sigm...

I believe the real reason for not using TIPS is two-fold... 1)  You have to trust the government, the same one that is likely causing inflation in the first place via excess money creation, to correctly care and report on the TIPS  (see Argentina and inflation cheating for more details).. 2)  The wa...

The last time Gold peaked in 1979 (?) or so, it had a value that the total value of US gold reserves was enough to completely cover US foreign debt. If you apply the same metric with today's numbers...  Let's see.... Total US Debt (Approx.):  $14 trillion % of debt held by foreigners:  25% Total US ...

I went with the monetary cycle diversification.  It seems silly to expect that we will continue to grow at the rate between 1980 to 2000. The steady real returns are also a big bonus, especially once the portfolio is needed to fund retirement. The steady real returns in the drawdown phase of retire...

VTI  +5%
GLD +13%
TLT  +3%
SHV  +0%