BTW, several of the people who looked into modeling TIPS left the exercise swearing them off with their own money. Wow, that is very telling about TIPS. I remember liking the concept of protection against inflation in a bond, but I never really cared for their ultimate performance. Plus, the conspi...

Found this article today that says some states are beginning to declare passive investment accounts as abandoned and taking the money for themselves. http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20170512/FREE/170519958/states-scoop-up-investment-accounts-as-unclaimed-property?X-IgnoreUserAgent=1 I feel li...

sophie wrote:I think I defined active vs passive already. Passive = trading in order to maintain a pre-set asset allocation. Active = buying and selling in response to an individual's prediction of future market trends. Agreed?

This pretty much nails it.

Banks should be ashamed of themselves...interest rates have barely budged despite the jump in Treasuries. Agree. Chase keeps sending me a deal for $200 to deposit $15,000 into one of their savings accounts and leave it for 90 days. It's actually a good deal except that I will have to pretty much in...

The middle class is being obliterated... but that has nothing to do with elected officials. It's been a process going on for decades under both parties. It's fun to pick teams, but both teams are out to get us!

This post is very timely from my own perspective. I was thinking about a kind of reverse look at our economic situation by studying what the different asset classes were doing. For example, when gold, stocks, and bonds are all falling, we're seeing "money tightening". I'd like to cover all...

Xan wrote:http://www.gotfuturama.com/Multimedia/E ... V06/05.mp3

Lol! Hey, at least it's still around in the year 3000, right?

Pet Hog wrote:I'm expecting a bumper next five years to revert us to the mean!

Here's hoping...

Bitcoin is an interesting idea, but I will never use it. I see the appeal, I guess, but it's been around a long time now with very little adoption. Even Discover is accepted more places.

Unless I'm reading things wrong... it looks like the rates are down to 2.2% APY... hope some were able to nab that 3% APY.

The financial press (advertising) is no different than any other commercial news source with paying advertisers...bad news sells. He's selling doom porn. Good for his bottom line, likely not the best for yours. A pittance for an excellent read/listen about the history of markets, central banks, gho...

Hal is right that Rickards always seems to be preaching to the super wealthy. Not many have the means (or knowhow) to just go out and buy high-quality commercial real estate and works of art. I have read Currency Wars and watched a couple of Rickards things on youtube. He's always preaching doom an...

Well, it looks like the allocations may have changed. In the "Road to Ruin" book he advises Gold and Silver - 10% Cash (some in physical notes) - 30% Real Estate (Agricultural or income producing)-20% Fine Art Fund- 5% Angel and Venture Capital 10% Hedge Funds 5% High Quality Sovereign Bo...

all i can say is if i followed that model ,except for possibly the prime land doing well , odds are i could never have had enough to retire . Yes, it's a very defensive portfolio that won't generate much income during normal times. I think it's more of a wealth preservation strategy. as far as my o...

Hello eufo, some questions that you might know :-) : "20% Gold (physical only, and not stored in a bank)" Stored where? At home? That's one possibility, yes. The idea is that it should be readily available instead of tied up in a secured location you may not end up having access to during...

I've been listening to a couple of James Rickards' audiobooks recently. They're pretty damn interesting... lots of history on global finance, currency exchanges, central banks, etc. He is not fond of sovereign debt of any kind... leaving out treasuries. He also doesn't like financial stocks, emergin...

It's always a little bittersweet when gold and bonds are strengthening. I'm currently overweight both in my long and slow transition from PP to semi-GB. Days like today feel pretty good in my brokerage account, but at what cost? I really hope peace prevails. Would be interested in what GB per cent ...

It's always a little bittersweet when gold and bonds are strengthening. I'm currently overweight both in my long and slow transition from PP to semi-GB. Days like today feel pretty good in my brokerage account, but at what cost? I really hope peace prevails.

I think you'd be doing your friend a favor if you talked him into selling half of his EM allocation, and buying gold. It's an OK portfolio, if he's younger. If he's over 50, he's going to have trouble when the 60% stocks and REIT lose 1/2 or more of their value in the next bear market. Indeed I wou...

He picked a portfolio I don't particularly care for Was it Sheltered Sam? No. Though I'm not fond of that either. He never gave me the name of the allocation, but it went something like this: 30% Total Stock Market 20% Total Bond Market 20% Inflation Protected Bonds (TIPS) 15% REIT 15% Emerging Mar...

This post isn't about the Permanent Portfolio so much as active vs. passive investing, which most of the posts in this thread (and many others) are really about. My brother has long been a staunch believer in market timing with stocks as the best way to invest. He's also become increasingly busy, b...

INTP here. Very interesting results.

dualstow wrote:eufo, if you're going to buy large, mid AND small, why not just buy the whole market, i.e., VTI? No overlap.

According to Tyler's site, mixing the 3 blends comes out on top of the total stock market long term (8.5% vs. 7.4% average return). The research I've done seems to support that.

Ok, I'm currently investing the stock portion of my portfolio into Vanguard ETFs, but after some analysis, I'm thinking iShares looks like the better deal. I'm going to share why I think that and I'm looking for anything I may be missing here. I'm splitting my exposure into 3 parts... large/mid/smal...

Unfortunately, its either all cash or all the default fund. Yipes! That's just horrible. Given the all-in nature, I think going all cash assets in that account is your best bet, since the default fund is a real wild card. The remainder of your assets outside the account could go to everything else ...