Every investment approach has a set of economic, political, social, cultural, and ecological beliefs embedded in the assumptions on which the strategy is based (and these assumptions rarely show up in the prospectus). Sometimes, oftentimes, investors do not realize they are making bets.  For exampl...

Roy, That's a great post.  It got me to thinking about what an investor really needs to know when evaluating the PP (or any other approach to investing). First, in evaluating an approach to investing and its suitability to a particular investor, it is important for the investor to understand his own...

TLT pays a monthly dividend.  For some reason, the chart on Yahoo Finance sometimes doesn't show a dividend every month, but it pays one monthly.  It normally shows up in your account around the 11th of the month. EDV pays a dividend quarterly (for anyone who is interested in zeroes). For those who ...

Pres wrote:

MediumTex wrote: I put a small sign out in my yard.  :D

"I OWN GOLD - VISIT CRAWLINGROAD.COM TO LEARN WHERE I HIDE IT"

I don't mind telling them. I will just be honest and say that I keep it at Pres's house. 

VTSMX for domestic equities and VGTSX for international exposure.  My allocation is 85%/15%.

There are plenty of good low cost index funds out there.

I put a small sign out in my yard. 

That's not correct.  TIPS have only been around for 13 years, so there is no long stretch of time over which to evaluate the performance of TIPS relative to gold. Clarification: the expected behavior of TIPS is quite typical of what gold effectively returns most of the time: a small real return ove...

That explosive growth is what the PP needs to offset losses in other assets (especially LT bonds) when needed. But just to pick a fight here... That whole argument basically stems on A) reliance on past performance being indicative of the future (guilty of this myself many times over) and B) predic...

Why would it be important to be able to access all of your cash holdings during a few days when the markets are closed? What would an investor want to do with funds that are already invested in the safest instruments in the world (t-bills) during such a period?  If you are talking about accessing th...

I think that whatever approach one takes to storage, it makes sense to have diversity among storage methods and multiple layers of security around each method of storage.  This isn't as hard to do as it may sound. A person who owns a little PRPFX, GLD, coins in a safe deposit box, coins in a coffee ...

Most PP followers seem to hate TIPS. Let me clarify this point a bit. I don't think PP-ers hate TIPS in general--rather, I think they do not believe that TIPS are a suitable replacement for gold in the PP structure. As part of a different allocation strategy where the viability of the whole portfol...

Let me partially answer your question. The key to the security of anything, IMHO, is not in putting it in a strong enough box or behind a tall enough fence, but rather in focusing on minimizing the number of people who are aware that there is something interesting either in the box or behind the fen...

so the question is ... what are -the pros and cons of total bond vs treasuries Total bond market contains corporates and treasurys, which is going to be riskier than 100% treasuries and may provide a slightly higher return based upon the same duration of bond. In a deflationary spiral, corporates w...

There is only one true narrative:  If I invest in (insert strategy or fund) it will go down.  I think because the PP is a specific strategy, and also includes Gold—in what is interpreted as massive weighting—this truism can be particularly pronounced.  Add LT Treasuries to that (Bull Market for dec...

I am putting this under Gold simply because the point I am going to make is especially applicable to the gold bug and anti-gold bug camps and the narratives embedded in each. The title "Narratives Drift Away" means that there are at any given point in time many different storylines in the ...

I used to have a dog that was the sweetest, most even-tempered animal you would ever want to meet.  He was one of those dogs that is almost human-like in his ability to relate to people.  I got him when he was about two years old and he had been in a couple of homes when I got him. The one tick he h...

The Greek economy generates insufficient surpluses to permit the repayment of their debt under any set of circumstances. Since Greece has no printing press, the debt must be restructured or liquidated.  It's just a question of how it's going to happen and whether it will happen sooner or later.  Wit...

If I recall correctly, Browne was one of the founders of PRPFX in 1982 and invested some of his money in the fund. Not exactly.  Terry Coxon, Browne's collaborator and protege started the fund.  I don't know if Browne ever personally invested in the fund. Browne preferred the 4x25% approach, but co...

I think I-bonds are awesome.  One of the things they do is instantly expand your tax-deferred space.  People will catch on to this one day I am sure. In your view, are there any limits to how far this can be taken?  Hypothetically, would you be willing to hold 100% of your cash in I-bonds during th...

MediumTex - Yes - I was referring to I series savings bonds.   If it's OK to use them for all or most of the cash component, then it certainly would allow me to "stretch" my annual contributions much further since, as you suggest, I'd probably need most of my available tax deferred space ...

I believe they are about 1.5 times as volatile as similar duration coupon bonds.

I own a little EDV.

Do you mean I series savings bonds or TIPS?  I am a big fan of I series savings bonds for the cash piece.  I don't like TIPS at all. I don't think there is any magic formula for tax deferred vs. non-tax deferred holdings with respect to keeping some rebalancing powder dry.  It probably makes sense (...

I think that pattern is probably common right now just because fear is still pretty prevalent among investors.  As fear begins to wane, however, I imagine that risk appetite will steadily return and the perception of the PP will once again shift from being too risky to being too conservative. The de...

I don't know anything about this company specifically other that what I see in the ads, but conceptually it strikes me as one of those solutions that is more complicated than the problem. Assuming it is legit I'm not saying it may not be right for some people, it just strikes me as a maze of potenti...

One just gives you a little longer treasury exposure and more sensitivity to interest rates.