And and stock future and oil futures are absolutely tanking. Going to be another fun, exciting day tomorrow, haha.

In my mind, once 30-year bond yields hit -1%, the cost to cash out federal reserve notes and stick them in a vault becomes attractive relative to the 1% cost of keeping the money in the bond. The problem in your thinking is that you are thinking of this only from your perspective, as a small indivi...

Investing in bonds seems relativistic to me. The speed of light is always constant, no matter how fast you travel. The returns from bonds are always the same, no matter what your clever strategy is! The sheer size of the treasury market means it's pretty difficult to perform any real worthwhile arb...

Negative interest rates aren’t so weird in a deflationary environment, in which the rate of inflation is negative. So my guess is that if we see negative interest rates in the U.S. for a long period of time, it will be during a long, drawn-out deflation. This is precisely what we are in now. Corpor...

Negative yields in the U.S. would definitely force a lot of people out into riskier assets with money that they otherwise would have kept safe... It seems to me as interest rates approach zero on the longer end of the spectrum it would drive money into stocks, gold and cash. Again, I don't see the ...

pmward, is there a book or book chapter, or paper you would recommend that discusses this cycle? Navigating Big Debt Crisis by Ray Dalio Also, by "... and bond holders get a compounding expense ," do you mean that, whenever the bond interest rate is less than inflation, bond holders are p...

Are these held taxable or tax deferred? If taxable there is benefit to selling and realizing the gain as a long term cap gain and trading down to the lower yield (you may even be able to harvest some stock losses right now to help pay the tax bill). Now, you do alter your average maturity when you d...

Yes, small time retail investors could hold physical cash, but it would be almost impossible for large institutions and businesses, which is really where most of the wealth is held. Aside from the possibility, there is also the feasibility aspect. Where to stash this cash? Obviously, the members of ...

If anyone wants to feel a bit better about the stock selloff the last couple weeks, this is a great video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddTRrc0A7Vo He looks back historically since the VIX was first started in 1990 at each of the 10 times that we had a VIX spike similar to what we have experience...

Might I introduce you to Tyler's wonderful article on bond convexity: https://portfoliocharts.com/2019/05/27/high-profits-at-low-rates-the-benefits-of-bond-convexity/ Combine that with the fact that gold is highly correlated to negative real interest rates, and the fact that lower risk free rates co...

Dalio's thoughts on the corona virus https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-thoug ... ray-dalio/

I went early this morning to do my shopping before the crowds. I actually stocked up on food. I usually just purchase food fresh that I'm going to eat the next week. But this week I actually filled my freezer and pantry up. I'm single and live alone, so if I do catch it and cannot leave the house fo...

So I do think a reaxamination of the classic 4x25 portfolio is necessary should our rates decline to the point that Europe's have. At that point I would almost think a 3x33 comprising of cash, gold and stocks would make more sense....off the cuff It doesn't have to be an all or nothing binary switc...

I'm going to challenge the very foundation of your thesis that everything else is built upon. > My understanding of our macroeconomic situation is that in order for long-term interest rates to increase, we need to deleverage our economic system. Can deleveraging happen in a higher interest rate envi...

Yeah, the type of cat and dog do matter. There are some that trigger my sinus allergies and some that don't. The one thing I do have to watch out for though is at least rinsing my hands off after I pet a dog or cat, as if I forget and accidentally rub my eye after my eye will get super red and irrit...

In the current portfolio I set up in January 2003 with all new investments going to Vanguard Prime Money Market from since then it's evolved to a 60% fixed (all the money market investments plus an initial investment in Vanguard short-term investment grade bond fund) and 40% equity. It's somewhat o...

I am allergic to both dogs and cats, yet I've lived with both my entire life with no regrets. Good old Zyrtec. I'm actually looking at getting a pup in the fall. My last dog passed away a couple years ago and it's definitely beyond time to get a new hiking buddy.

Thanks for the quick response and the excellent questions. I would be happy with TIPS if I put $100,000 into them today and I had exactly $100,000 in today's dollars of purchasing power ten years from now. In other works, no real return. But also no real loss of purchasing power. Tex and Craig wrot...

I'm not an expert in TIPS vs IBonds so I will leave that to someone else. But you do mention implementing this as a defensive VP. Are you sure that this is actually safer than just being in the PP? Or does it just feel safer? What metrics do you personally care to use to define safety (max drawdown,...

Our office in San Francisco just got told to work from home indefinitely as well beginning next week. We also just had our first community spread here in AZ, so I'm sure my office is not far behind.

Yeah I didn't trigger the rebalance. So when bonds break down next week you all can blame me, haha. Side note, I am glad it is the weekend now and there are no market happenings to think about for a couple days.

Ugh, I'm going to sit on my hands a bit. With some patience, I can rebalance hopefully around stocks at those 2018 lows. I already put a lot of money into stocks last Friday with a large contribution, and while I'm still up on that money a bit, it's close to going negative... so I'm going to give th...

I'm rebalancing a couple percent of bonds back into stocks today. Did you hit a band, or are you just taking advantage of the recent swings? As of yesterday, my LTT's are still only at 28%. I generally go more by feel for rebalancing, I'm ~2.5% over allocation on bonds (maybe more after prices are ...

Wow, just WTF is up with bonds today??? I'm rebalancing a couple percent of bonds back into stocks today. This is beyond nuts.

In a related note, I had already thought that seeing all these companies shutting down entire office buildings and making people work from home indefinitely might be a turning point where some companies see that they don't need as much big expensive office space and start thinking about ramping up ...