Mayday you have been really helpful. Can you point me to the portfolio simulator you used to get the TLT to Gold chart? The URL you mentioned does not work and I have been unable to find anything else that provides this ratio over the date range. Thanks.

This is veering way off topic. Forget AI. I only mentioned it because it might be relevant to the Energy Adjustment mod to the PP. The author advocates adding energy producer stocks (XLE) to the portfolio in this modification. He argues that a deficiency in the PP is that it does not take into accou...

Over the years there has been a lot of discussion in this forum regarding how to improve on the Permanent Portfolio. This book offers two ways for doing so. The swap between gold and long term treasuries makes sense to me, but I am not convinced that the addition of energy stocks does. For one thing...

I am curious why the Yahoo graphs like the one shown below have huge dips when the market is closed.

My not so well balanced (but within the rebalance limits) PP gained 9.25%, and my VP (gold coins) gained 15%.
I plan to stick with PP for half my assets, and the other half in gold as my outlook for the future is generally negative, but I am only right about anything half the time.

Interesting editorial in today's WSJ. Guess I will be changing Schwab ETFs for Vanguard's. Screenshot 2023-05-16 140051.png wsj.com Opinion | The ESG Proxy Vote Ranking The Editorial Board 4–5 minutes Is your asset manager voting based on the interests of investors or for political agendas? May 15, ...

Does anyone know of a broad market ETF that does NOT include financial companies (banks, insurance companies, etc.)?

whatchamacallit wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 6:07 pm I think long term treasuries may actually have the most short term potential so I like them again as of right now.

I would really like to hear your reasoning on this.

I think an individual policy on top of the one you are already paying for via the annual storage fees would be a waste of money. There is an annual audit by an independent outfit that counts every coin in every container which I assume is required by the insurance agency (Lloyds). By the way, the Ll...

Well this is interesting. An offshoot of Consumers Reports is taking on the ESG people.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022 ... -activism/

I wonder what changed at CR?

Last week my wife and I finally managed to visit the SWP vault facility on Grand Cayman. This was a visit planned back in early 2020 that was interrupted by the Wuhan lock down. Our plane tickets were placed on hold, and we waited all this time for the Island to finally reopen. Meanwhile, we sent al...

As of today, I am BlackRock free. My current PP consists of VTI, SCHO, GLDM and SPTL. (I held VTI previously so did not change it). What is interesting is that in every case, the expense ratio was significantly lower than I was paying with BlackRock. So it was well worth the exercise of looking for ...

If you search Black Rock + ESG you get a sickening number of links to PR-like pages glowing about how committed they are to fight climate change, etc. But you get the same crap with Vanguard, State Street, Schwab and Fidelity. Black Rock seems to be the worst however as many state treasurers (especi...

I have been using VTI, TLT, SHY and IAU for my PP but do not want to support the wokeness of Blackrock and Vanguard. Are there altenative ETFs that are not into the ESG movement?

Well I have to use up my Cayman airline credit from 2020 before it expires, so the wife and I are going to visit SWP-CI in early November, unless they close the island down again for the Monkey Pox or something. I have been very pleased with the service from these people. Last January I sold some co...

About 2 months ago I had to sell about $200K in coins stored at SWP-Cayman. The funds were in my US brokerage around 3 days later. I am using the secure notes feature in LastPass to let my executor access all my secrets (passwords, account numbers, etc.) Previously I was using Dashlane. The idea is ...

Shrugged – I agree in general but if most of your savings are in a 401 or IRA, then it is hard to avoid having gold there. KBG – Yes, the title sounds like click bait but it actually reflects my contempt for the IRS and its methods. Now, I managed to find a detailed analysis of this decision prepare...

From the WSJ. Sorry for the long post, but the story is behind their paywall. (Bold emphasis is mine). This is really an outrage. She appeared to do everything right but got screwed anyway. Let's hope they win on appeal. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------...

They put the coins back in the same tube they came from and opened the next tube. When everything was counted, all the tubes went into the large plastic bin that contains all my coins. BTW, Cayman has "opened" now so you can visit them without being quarantined. But Cayman still requires a...

Pugchief, In my case with SWP, I have a mix of 1 oz gold coins (Eagles, Marlins, Maple leafs, Britanicas and Philharmonics), so it would have taken a while to round this assortment up. In addition, about 1/3 of my holdings were sent to them for storage is a rather odd arrangement of marked tubes. Th...

Hi Coasting, If you click on one of the coins shown on their site, you get both the purchase and buy back price. For example right now the gold 1 oz eagle is listed as $1856.80 and buy back is $1769.30 so the spread is 4.9%. (That's actually pretty low compared to what it was a few months ago). Othe...

About 2 years ago, someone on this forum recommended SWP Cayman for offshore precious metals storage. I opened an account with a very small holding and made plans to visit them in May 2020. Well, the island closed due to the Wuhan. It is open now, but anyone visiting must spend a week in quarantine,...

Another reason for storing your gold off shore. https://reason.com/2021/07/29/fbi-seized-900000-from-safe-deposit-box-on-pure-conjecture-federal-judge-says/ "A federal judge issued a sharp rebuke to the FBI's attempt to expose the identity of one of the anonymous victims of a March raid that se...

The one CDC statistic I believe is total deaths and age, mainly because I don't think you can fake a death and there is no incentive to fudge the age of the deceased. So the latest results are shown below. I think the pandemic delta or otherwise is over.

Bullion Vault is a good alternative to offshore coin storage. In my case, I already had a stock of coins, and it was cheaper to ship them then to sell them and buy the fractional ownership bars. Plus I like the idea of being able to visit my gold in person and take delivery of it if I want. But to g...