Those are interesting results Jay as most of what I have read on this forum indicates that waiting for the rebalancing bands normally leads to higher gains due to momentum effects. Although 3 years is a relatively small sample size.

Unfortunately I'm not savvy enough with Excel and whatnought to incorporate rebalancing. I just plugged the ETFs into stockcharts.com and crunched the numbers myself. But looking at August 2011 it seems like gold might have hit a rebalancing band there as it was up 45% from just May 2010 (ZFL was on...

Am a Canadian PPer, not in the Ottawa area unfortunately. Approach sharing will have to use the wondrous interwebs!

Glad I could help in a small way. I think it's always useful when the Canadians on this board share their experiences (Gossi is another who has helped my thinking). Interesting about ZFS re: all federal. It's somewhat of an useful thought experiment because, presumably, Ontario, BC or any province w...

As a fellow Canadian I thought I would share my thoughts. I agree with Ad Orientem regarding the stock allocation as I split my stock allocation into 50% Canadian 50% World. My theoretical Canadian PP is comprised of the following: 12.5% CRQ - Canadian Fundamental Index 12.5% XWD - World Index (comp...

An interesting new Canadian ETF that brings a passive spin to momentum stock investing: http://www.xtf.ca/overview/?etf=WXM Here is the index it is based upon: http://www.xtf.ca/documents/fundDoc_42.pdf?52844 This seems like an interesting product to try out in a VP, but keep in mind that it is a ve...

I know there are quite a lot of Canadians on this forum so wanted to see the reaction to the following article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/markets/markets-blog/tsx-still-lagging-us-stocks-whats-the-deal/article2393049/ I know that Gosso (correct me if I'm wrong) puts 5% in XWD (gl...

Gosso, Good points. My position on this is something Craig advocates (as does HB) in that it's better to do what you can instead of not doing it at all. Since I'm fairly new to this (and don't have a tremendous amount invested ~20K) I prefer to go the all ETF route. My Scotia iTrade account lets me ...

Clacy, Thanks for your responses. It's interesting to hear from someone who actually implements the strategy. The appeal of the HBPP comes from the fact that I agree with the basic underlying logic of the portfolio, and secondly that it is lazy and easy. The article I cited in my original post pique...

Another point to add (from a Canadian perspective): Although the starting point doesn't go back very far and therefore it is less useful if you look at a Canadian PP using iShares; XIC for stocks, XSB for short bonds (corporate and gov't not perfect), XLB for long bonds (again corporate and gov't) a...

Hi Craig, I'm also implementing the PP from Canada. I have one for myself (PP1) and one for my mother (PP2). Hers is the traditional one, mine I've made adjustments to the stock allocation. PP2 25% stocks    - XIC (described by Gosso previously) 25% lg bonds  - ZFL (again described by Gosso) 25% gol...

This would definitely need to be a long term strategy, but I find it interesting that it would actually avoid most of the big drops in any one asset class. Based on this strategy, you would have no stock allocation in 1973, 1974, 2001, 2002, or 2008. So you would miss declines of -18.1%, -27.2%, -11...

An interesting article on momentum investing: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/behind-the-numbers/the-surprisingly-strong-case-for-index-roulette/article2365067/ The six basic asset classes: three-month Canadian treasury bills, long-term Canadian bonds, the S&P/TSX ...

Tex, Craig, Clive, I agree with all your comments, and I agree that this type of index wouldn't work as well in a PP. The article states that the likely performance would be the following: "lower gains than the market index during strong bull markets (such as the tech bubble) - this is the big ...

I've recently read an interesting article on the idea of Low Volatility Indexing and wanted to know what the Permanent Portfolio advocates think about it. Here's the article: http://howtoinvestonline.blogspot.com/2012/01/low-volatility-equity-etfs-promising.html And here's a performance chart from s...

Shadow, Gosso, Thanks for the views. As Gosso notes, the reason I chose CGL.C over IGT is because of iTrade's free commissions. I'm giving up .31% on the MER but saving between $10-$30 on commissions (depending on which brokerage is being used). Since I plan on adding smaller amounts as I put more m...

Hi Guys, After learning a lot about Harry Browne and the Permanent Portfolio last year I just started my Canadian PP using our Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSA) here in Canada. Using Scotia iTrade which has commission free ETF trading on select Claymore and iShares products I put together the followi...