STTs (or some other ST instrument) are always better than cash unless the nominal rate is actually negative. But again, what to do is not difficult at all. Go with the highest interest rate for a given length and risk level. I think it does get a bit trickier than that if you look at the countries ...

Is inflation low? Trillion dollar deficits for 10 years, thats 10 trillion of inflationary pressure. And they say banks create 90% of new money? How much are they lending compared with how much gets payed back (destroyed) Food is cheap, but also subsidized. What if the subsidies ended. Whats the po...

Pmward, My comments are totally subjective based off my experience. I thought I had excellent knowledge of a few specific markets in the past where I made large bets. But without being on the inside, at least with individual issues, it was worse than flipping a coin, for me. I agree on your other p...

A pair of articles written this week by Kevin Muir on MMT, analyzing it and trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, and looking at how we as investors should look at and prepare for MMT. It is very unbiased and is not political in any way (though he does mention that under Trump we actually are...

Let me ask a basic question that hurt my returns for 20+ years. Why have a VP at all? I don't. Why do you think you can do better than a fund or ETF? Do you have insider information? Do you think you can time the market? Read charts? See that head and shoulder or cup and handle, or moving average c...

Yeah, that's a good way to look at objective numbers and let that guide you. For me, I've still got a ways to go in my accumulations, but I am currently saving a bit over 50% of my income, which made me very nervous when I was in an aggressive asset allocation. For behavioral reasons 40% stocks is a...

No, it’s a really, really bad idea. Seriously folks break away from the media and go do your own independent reading on why EVERY COUNTRY on the face of the planet left the gold standard. There is a very specific thing that happens with fixed monetary systems when severe economic contractions occur...

Also keep in mind, in regards to the PP, the idea is to rebalance over time. So if bonds are down in value and yields are going up, you will be purchasing more of them. That rebalance effect does tend to naturally claim more and more yield over time. So I think the PP will still work as intended. Ju...

Another article that I came across today looking at the issue of bond returns going forward: https://movement.capital/analyzing-bond ... ded4b883a5

nothing is ever going to be 100% guaranteed . but there are things that make sense .. the comparison to japan is a poor one . not only are we not japan but had someone in japan bought a global fund or invested in other countries their outcome would be very different .. The comparison to Japan is no...

Steve Forbes made a recent PBS documentary called "In Money We Trust" that made a similar argument. It's definitely worth watching, and can be viewed for free online.

there is always a cost to everything but higher returns does not always mean higher risk ... i used the fidelity insight growth model for more than 30 years . it is a 100% equities model but it strives to beat the s&p 500 but with a smaller beta .. it has done that very well.. after 30 years th...

We are twins separated at birth. I had the same philosophy when I was hyper-accumulating (TRIPLE TWINS). I think MMM and Jacob Lund Fisker both wrote about how having a high savings rate is much more important than investment returns. the best is do both... a high savings rate is you working for yo...

when you take typical accumulation periods which span decades you would be betting against that house that the winner won't be equities so a long term investor who is mitigating temporary dips would likely have no financial logic to it .. typical periods run 25-40 years ... so mentally , sure it ma...

It seems like stock buybacks should be allowed as long as they’re done with excess capital, i.e., not with borrowed funds. In a sense, stock buybacks are the opposite of issuing new stock. Companies issue new stock to raise capital, so the opposite activity (buying back shares) should be done to dr...

It's also worth noting that stock buybacks were illegal prior to 1982. Yeah, I actually just learned that a few weeks ago. I wasn't aware it was ever banned. But yeah, some politicians are moving to ban it again because they think it's unethical to allow executives to raid their companies balance s...

In other words, my assumption that companies only do share buybacks when they have surplus capital was apparently incorrect. Interesting. Follow-up question: What is the likely thought process of a corporate executive who borrows money to buy back shares? Is the idea that unless the shareholders se...

Jesse Felder released a blog post today that in a lot of ways touches on some of the things we've been discussing here: https://thefelderreport.com/2019/04/24/the-perils-of-pursuing-monetary-policy-that-explicitly-makes-the-economy-reliant-on-bubbles/?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=b6f49e79...

Try Google sheets. I was a C++ programmer too and always thought spreadsheets were complicated, especially one written by a company like Microsoft who "excels" at complicating things. Google sheets is a lot simpler IMHO. Microsoft has gotten a lot better in the last few years. My most pro...

realistically for a long term investor , mitigating temporary short term dips with assets that will permanently lower long term returns has little financial logic to it ...but if it keeps them from bad investor behavior then great . all these other assets are what we use when we have time constrain...

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4250756-buybacks-making-market-look-cheaper ^ wrong? If the only metric someone looks at is P/E, then yes it does make the market look cheaper than it is. I think an argument could be made that over the last 10 years buybacks alone are the main reason for the U.S. o...

It's easy to decide to take capital gains when you get to do it at the 0% rate, but things get trickier if you're subject to the 15% rate. What if in future you expect to have a window where you can take the gains at a 0% rate? You'd be missing out on that not to mention the power of tax deferral. ...

Hint #2: Gross vs. net corporate debt. Credit card analogy #2: My credit card debt is up 10 fold again, darn it! Going from $100 to 1000 and I have 100K in STTs. Do I have a debt problem? Have you examined a chart of corporate profits to GDP? Surprise...also at historical highs. Look away folks, no...

Everyone loves Dalio's video but im not sure yet. How does he come up with "typically 50 years" for a long term cycle. The world changes a lot over 50 year spans. We had a soft landing after the tech bubble. If it was even a "bubble", we didnt know how tech would pan out. Predic...

Sounds good and really super scary...a perfect news story headline to sell news. Dig a little deeper and you will find corporate debt is a big fat meh right now. Hint: If I make $100K a year and my credit card balance goes up by an astounding factor of 10 do I have a problem? Answer: It depends...w...