The talking heads are only doomers in hindsight. Right now they are trying to calm the sheep.

Jack Jones wrote:

ochotona wrote: This week would be a really good time to lighten up on stocks.

Why's that?

Lance Roberts: The mark of a bear

Though deflation may continue in the real world for years, once the LTT has gone up to a certain level, it has effectively priced-in all of the forward-looking market expectation about inflation / deflation. The security will stay at that price point until new "information" (or a rumor) em...

This week would be a really good time to lighten up on stocks.

I am currently 30% stocks, 69.5% various kinds of bonds more than 1/2 US Treasuries, 0.5% gold. Ready for the fireworks.

Negative 6 months in a row. Gold and LTT's doing absolutely nothing DOW down 500 PP = Pathetic Portfolio. So why don't you change? 1. Sell most or all of the gold on a short-term bump, hopefully it's not in an IRA, so you can take the tax loss for 2015, and buy "regular" bonds, like ETF B...

Gold didn't really respond AT ALL during two World Wars wherein tens of millions of people died, neither to the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s when people really thought the USA was going to be nuked. If not then... WHEN?  :P Ok, now it's obvious that you know absolutely nothing about gold. Everyo...

During inflation, you want to have debts, because the real value of the debt goes away with time. During deflation, the opposite; you want to be the person holding other people's debts (you want to be the lender). That's assuming they can pay. US Treasuries should be good. During 2009-2015, S&P5...

The price is UKP 739 today. Wake me up when it's UKP 300.

There is an analogy to health insurance, actually. Why carry health insurance if you can defer the purchase and buy it when you find out you are really sick? I don't doubt that given the mountains of debt that countries are piling up that they may very well have to inflate away their debts, and the ...

gold is confused and has no clue what it is supposed to respond to so until gold has a purpose to move basically the portfolio is losing value . So we just wait until it wanders into $350 per ounce, then we buy. Then we wait twenty years until it stumbles for unknown reasons up to $2000 per ounce, ...

Desert wrote: Even Total Bond Market doesn't differ much from those four examples.  I'm pretty much settling in on Intermediate Treasuries, but I'd be willing to use some TBM if I had to.

Half Intermediate Treasuries and half TBM sounds pretty good. Just no Emerging Market bonds or High Yield bonds!

Fred wrote:

Reub wrote: It seems that the PP goes as gold goes.

It only accounts for 25% of the strategy so how does that work?

Because addition.

Portfolio 1: 50% LT Treasuries, 50% ST Treasuries Portfolio 2: 100% 10 year Treasury Portfolio 3: 25% ST Treasuries, 25% Intermediate Treasuries, 25% 10 year Treasury, 25% LT Treasuries Portfolio 4: 100% Intermediate Term Treasuries Personally, it's easier for me to own #3 vs. #1, but in the end, it...

dualstow wrote:

ochotona wrote: My stops went off on Black Monday... it was not pretty.

Sorry to hear that.

No really, it was OK in the grand scheme of things. It's not good to get overly greedy.

Now it will be emotionally ugly if stock quickly pop back above the 200 day MA and I have to wonder about buying in again.

Where 50 day MA dives below 200 day MA. Last one was Aug 2011 during the last big sell-off, and the Fed intervened big-time with QE, and off to the races we went. The death cross reversed itself in January 2012, a bullish indicator. Maybe this bull market is too old and tired, and maybe they won't o...

I am really beginning to wonder if gold is an intergenerational purchase at this point. Gold took 21 years go from peak to trough, 1980-2001. 2011 + 21 years = 2032. I'll be 71 years old. Or let's speed it up to 10 years peak to trough. In 2021, I'll be 60. Then how long do we wait for it to go up.....

My stops went off on Black Monday... it was not pretty. I got a lower price than I wanted, but I've been in since 2009 and have had such a huge gain, so... I'm not overly concerned. It was a big win; I turned all of those gains into cash. I'm down from 60% to a 30% stock allocation now, the Desert ...

I don't think this is the time to abandon the PP. This coming from someone who has been highly critical of the PP, who is not in the PP now. It is sort of time to think about doing the opposite.

The volatility is stunning

Black Monday

Interesting that gold is down 0.43% on the day, as of 3:32 Eastern USA time. If it were "working as intended", it would be up. way up. VIX is hugely up, but gold is down. Safe haven or just another commodity, like oil and copper?

When I examine the traditional PP ST + LT Treasury configuration, versus a Treasury ladder (equal parts ST, Intermediate Term, 10 year, and Long Term), they look the same on Portfoliovisualizer.com. But the latter bond sub-portfolio is psychologically easier to own, you don't feel like you're taking...

I think the worst thing about the pp is watching your friends with 100% in equities do well in recent years. Nothing like a 530-pt Dow drop to ease that pain. So perhaps, by limiting one's upside- no, make that merely the *illusion* of of a limited upside, the pp makes it hard to fail long-term. Th...

Very interesting lessons in volatility this year.

Maybe you could sell a gold ETF, move into GLTR for 31 days, and move back. GLTR is 68% gold, and the rest silver, platinum, palladium. The IRS would not consider GLTR to be the same type of asset as IAU / GLD / SGOL or physical.

A great book.