like i said look at the butterfly . equal dollars are put in the s&p 500 and small cap value . the tilt and bang for the buck by going that route instead of just a total market fund is what gives the portfolio the edge . it would not behave the same using say a total market fund vs using very sp...

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/sma...

many s&p 500 funds and total market funds are not good at tax efficiency . few funds own everything in the index . they own the heavy hitters and attempt to cature the return with a lot less stocks . some trade more than others . vanguard is very good , schwab's one of the worst for example . ht...

lots of reasons . even in a bull market when small and mid caps soar there is little difference between just an s&p 500 fund and a total market fund . just 50 stocks can control the other 450 in the s&p500 . the s&p determines 80% of the wilshire so in reality just 50 stocks can control ...

if you are holding in a brokerage account you may want to look in to tax efficiency between them . many index fund's don't hold everything in them so they swap holdings creating tax liability . i posted a chart of some s&p 500 funds in another thread . the difference between the lowest and highe...

it's funny , we were just talking about the fact the mortgages are gone today . i used to be a pro drummer many decades ago . i hooked up with the guys i was with 37 years ago on face book . we hit the studio for the first time in decades recently .. but what i wanted to say was ,we were talking abo...

i can trade ivv free as well as shy and tlt at fidelity

you guys are getting to wrapped up in this cash thing . the fact is even a retiree who spent down from 100% stock would have had a high success rate of it not being a problem . the higher gains in the up markets allow a bigger cushion for spending in the down markets . you would really have to have ...

the reality is for a long term investor , long term meaning a typical accumulation period spanning decades mitigating temporary short term dips with assets other than equity's that permanently reduce your long term gains has always made little sense financially . the short term mitigation is not nee...

even i agree , in a portfolio gold kind of sets a positive real return floor most of the time allowing an easier comeback that bonds do not always provide

If you have a bond fund, and interest rates rise, you immediately see a decrease in the share price. So you "feel" a loss. You may say, "Ah, jeez, I wish I had been holding individual bonds, which I could just hold to maturity!" But if you really did hold these individual bonds ...

the reality is anything pertaining to gold from the 1970's was really a mis-price both up and down . gold was subject to the perfect storm which was a sequence of events that likely will never combine and duplicate ever . so it ended up at a price that never should have happened . it is like the tra...

i found harry back in the 1980's and read all his books back then . i still have my original copy of why the best laid investment plans usually go wrong .

the models i used previously , my insight models were a mix of the conservative income and capital and preservation model with a beta of .38 and the growth and income model with a beta of .70 . returns were very good but swings were much less than now . the swings i see since the correlations seem t...

funny you should talk about percentages . after a while percentages mean little . the reason is a move when you are just accumulating money is very different from the same move 30 years later when fuel tanks are full . 30 years ago a 7% move may have represented a years ira contribution . today a 7%...

as rates go up and bonds are replaced your interest from TLT will go up offsetting the drop , your individual bond yields will never go up .

as long as you hold tlt for about 18 years you will get the original interest rate you bought it at . just like holding a bond to maturity more or less .

what a crazy day today . with assets lately acting more correlated than uncorrelated it was a hell of a day for the butterfly , except to the upside for a change . my portfolio moved far greater than even a 100% equity model i track . with the exception of a downward move my portfolio made pre butte...

be careful here . the schwab s&p 500 fund is quite tax inefficient if it matters to you . not all s&p funds own all 500 stocks . only 50 funds really dominate the index . the rest act as just filler so some funds more than other trade in and out of the less crucial stocks creating tax liabil...

very interesting . but of course as we know time frames can sure matter . if the hedge fund just bought tlt for 15 years from 2000 to 2015 TLT and nothing else it would have beat the s&p 500

compared to what ? compared to the fidelity insight models i have used since 1987 with excellent success . but they are not specifically geared for ducking the downturns . at this stage of my life i was hoping to avoid a large tumble if stocks fall by profiting in other areas with the gb if they do ...

the small cap index slyv acts leveraged and usually moves 2 to 3x what the s&p 500 does . gold is very volatile and long term treasury's very volatile too . so lately that version of the gb has been extremely more volatile than my regular portfolio . there are days the dollars moved match the 10...

yes ..... i have been very successful at it for 30 years now . there is no question different models fit the bigger picture better at different times . this may be the only mistake if i guessed wrong about rates coming down . the risk here in the gb is much higher than my usual portfolio which is a ...

depends . you may not have 10 years . many retiree's use the pp or gb for its risk parity and supposed low volatility . it took 35 years for rates to bottom out , if we have 10 years of rates rising back to normalizing many retirements can go bust from poor sequencing early on . so you can only sust...

treasury's , gold and stocks are not totally uncorrelated . at times like now they are strongly correlated . with all the arts moving up and down together on quite a few days and each part being very volatile im seeing deeper drops than 100% equity . same with gains at times . right now things are a...

how terribly wrong can it go ? no one knows . but with asset values falling greatly every time an increase is suspected the damage can be severe . the problem is intermediate term bonds do not have the power to do any heavy lifting in a sustained down turn . at best they mitigate some damage but the...