Has anyone here made a trip to China in recent years? Apparently Ray Dalio was less struck by the economic data coming out of China and more by what he actually saw in person (work ethic, drive, manufacturing robustness, etc.). Take a look at this great interview with Thomas Friedman about his rece...

Seems like Trump was the last chance for the US to cut spending, and it’s NOT happening. So, I am really reluctant to rebalance by buying long term treasuries. Especially at my age, 69. I do remind myself that as much as I don’t trust bonds, they did save me in the 2008 crisis. I remember my broker...

A great new book that's nominally about Apple but really about a broader reshaping of the supply chain and China using Apple's almost unimaginably vast investment in China to their own advantage has come out. Here's a guest article link to the NYT review: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/15/books/rev...

Good editorial in the NYT today: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/19/opinion/china-us-trade-tariffs.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IU8.zXCT.xEuo5piJPBMs&smid=url-share It's pretty one-sided but if you have NYT access there's a much longer piece by Ezra Klein in which he interviews China expert Thom...

Great piece on this over the weekend by Cullen Roche: "When you say the US government is at risk of default you are indirectly arguing that the US private sector will weaken substantially or that the US government will become so incredibly reckless with its spending that it will essentially des...

Since Harry Browne specifically recommended using the PP for "money you can't afford to lose" one could argue that it was an early version of what William Bernstein and many others call a liability-matching portfolio (LMP), except of course that it's really a probabalistic portfolio. Pre-2...

You have to register to read the full article but I found it worthwhile:

https://www.researchaffiliates.com/publ ... -gold-5000

Thanks for the thoughtful reply ochotona! Ben Carlson has a great post on the fluctuating value of the U.S. dollar that directly relates to this discussion: https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2025/05/the-u-s-dollar-vs-your-portfolio/ From the looks of it both gold and international stocks are basicall...

IGOV ETF has AUM = $830 Million That's not little. It's not like IEF AUM = $34,715 million, but almost a billion dollars is certainly large enough to be a well-functioning ETF. $20 million is the extinction point. I generally don't buy anything under $100 million. Thanks for that clarification ocho...

It seems to me that Trump's tariff tantrum has exacerbated and accelerated some already-extant macro trends that taken as a whole make it highly likely that the U.S. is no longer going to be dictating the terms of world trade and cannot count on being the sole reserve currency of choice. While Harry...

Timely update from one of the smartest guys in the room (always):

https://disciplinefunds.com/2025/04/19/ ... eading-15/

I doesn't take much time to manage this... Stockcharts.com, PerfCharts option, you can pull off the 1, 3, 6, 12 month total returns for all of your tickers in a few minutes. Trade once a month. The hard part is sticking to it, second-guessing yourself, letting the short-term ruin your long-term pla...

As everyone knows, I get in and out of positions using momentum, as defined and used in the paper A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation . Let's consider the two basic fixed-income safe-haven assets... T-Bills (SGOV or BIL) and the 10-year Treasury (IEF). If we compare SGOV to any non...

Since I posted the link to the CNBC piece on Dalio, I feel obligated to also share this great post by Ben Carlson on Dalio's track record with market predictions:

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2025/0 ... al-crisis/

Two bond-related posts (amidst the blizzard): This one from Bloomberg gives the lay of the land for Treasuries: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-11/treasuries-suddenly-trade-like-risky-assets-in-warning-to-trump?embedded-checkout=true And this one about Ray Dalio's warnings offers a b...

From over 4+ years ago. Don't know if anyone ever put it here, though. But now here it is! https://seekingalpha.com/article/4378268-3-risks-of-the-permanent-portfolio 3 Risks Of The Permanent Portfolio Oct. 08, 2020 8:32 PM Summary What's changed since the strategy was created. Why 2020's great per...

No idea if 30 year bonds make sense for a non-U.S. investor since I don't know which country's bonds you'd be using and what they're paying. Here are current yields in the U.S.L https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/rates-bonds/government-bonds/us I think Larry Swedroe's oft-cited rule of thumb - 20 bas...

I highly recommend subscribing to Cullen's newsletter (and reading his book & perusing his website). One of the smartest guys out there for sure, and when it comes to monetary policy there's no one better. I've often said he ought to be running the Fed, but knowing as much as he know he'd probab...

Well friends Tyler @ Portfolio Charts has truly outdone himself with this new, ultra-timely offering: https://portfoliocharts.com/2025/04/09/how-to-succeed-in-the-worst-stock-markets/ Like many others who frequent this board I'm a great admirer of Tyler's work. Here you have so many of his virtues o...

I'd do what coasting suggested to you: use the Portfolio Charts site, select your home country and go from there in choosing your assets. I have no expertise beyond that - sorry.

Smith1776 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 06, 2025 12:47 pm And here I thought this post was about a literal bunker haha.

That's how we keep all of the Boglehead's riff raff off of this board. They think we all live in bunkers stocked with AR-15's, gold bars and MRE's.

So yeah as mathjak said the original PP called for a Treasury money market fund not short-term Treasuries but Craig Rowland blessed the latter as a permissible tweak as long as one kept cash on hand for immediate needs. But for most of the years since folks "discovered" the PP - i.e. right...

Sometime in mid 2009 I transitioned from a supposedly conservative (40% equity, small cap and value tilted, globally-diversified DFA fund) portfolio that had been thoroughly backtested and was projected to be subject to at worst an 8-9% drawdown but which lost ~23% during the GFC to the PP. I did so...

It all depends of whether the investor is accumulation or living off of the assets. If they are eating the assets or within 5-10 years of doing so, absolutely variance matters. Variance is a major factor in portfolio survivability in retirement. People have a super hard time transitioning their min...