PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Discussion of funds that implement the Permanent Portfolio strategy

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pershing83

Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by pershing83 » Fri Apr 15, 2011 10:22 pm

As for the daily valuation of PRPFX I would guess there are some issues with calculating each asset and producing a number in a couple of hours. Maybe not...

Harry Brown lived near me and had run for POTUS on the Libertarian ticket, so I got interested in his investing ideas. By possibly 2005 I started looking at PRPFX as unique, at least IMO. I was selling a lot of stock/funds (advancing age) and had plenty of cash. The rest is history as they say. Looking at PRPFX by '06 and '07, started buying, and now have a lot. My argument for PRPFX is simple. It's done 10%/yr for 10 yrs and I woud think twice about improving that record. To beat Cuggino is a steep hill to climb. When I bought my first shares as I recall the fund had about $700-800 Mil, now it is 12 bil!

I would love to see us do 15-6% EOY. It's doable.
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Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by MediumTex » Fri Apr 15, 2011 10:30 pm

pershing83 wrote: Harry Browne lived near me and had run for POTUS on the Libertarian ticket, so I got interested in his investing ideas. By possibly 2005 I started looking at PRPFX as unique, at least IMO. I was selling a lot of stock/funds (advancing age) and had plenty of cash. The rest is history as they say.
Did you ever meet him?

He strikes me as having been a genuinely warm and generous person.
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Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by dualstow » Sat Apr 16, 2011 8:02 am

There is one thing that I find attractive in the mutual fund, but it's not about performance. It's that you can buy all four assets at once, no matter how small, and no matter how much space you have in your IRA/401(k). I've been going gangbusters filling up my tax-deferred accounts with 30-year treasuries, but I have to be careful to make sure I can still afford to buy enough gold to balance things out.

I suppose I could buy about $1500 worth of TLT on the same day as a 1 oz gold coin, but I won't bother. I guess this is the "screwing around" that pershing was referring to, not the mere monitoring of one's portfolio.

While all is well, I'm sometimes torn between buying gold and bonds and then redesignating a chunk of vp stock that I already own as part of my growing pp versus buying all four assets fresh so that they are all the same age. That is, I worry if it's fair to match new gold and bonds with "seasoned" stock that has already had time to appreciate (or fall).

Conversely, I could dump my unwanted VUSTX not by selling it but by redesignating it as as vp holdings instead of buying more gold and stock to match it.

In the long run, it probably won't matter.
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pershing83

Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by pershing83 » Sat Apr 16, 2011 10:38 am

Harry Browne lived in Franklin which adjoins Nashville. I did meet him but never really talked to him or spent anytime with him. He was popular, well liked, my age, but few  seemed to know of his investing ideas. Some years ago I had an fee for service investment advisor at Schwab, and asked him about PRPFX; said he had never heard of it or Harry Browne. That was my last (and only advisor). I believe his wife lives in Franklin. Wikipedia has a good biography. In investing luck is everything, beats being smart. PP ideas made me leave the ordinary mkt's and I was busily selling everthing back in 06-07, age related, wanted to leave my boys something, not because I knew what was coming, and was buying Vanguard Wellesley (VWINX) and PRPFX and CD's. Also, I thought a good way to own gold and the Swiss francs.

You guys probably know more about HB than I. 
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Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by dualstow » Wed May 04, 2011 12:44 pm

RIP Marcello Gandini
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Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by Reub » Wed May 04, 2011 2:02 pm

That was a very informative link.
pitbullshark

Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by pitbullshark » Mon Aug 29, 2011 2:32 am

Despite being a total "newbie" on this board, and this is basically now a dead thread, I will nevertheless make a comment because I can, have, and do READ and thus may have something worthwhile to say.

Upon seeing what the allocations are of the commercial "PRPXF" fund, I realize that it is NOT Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio, but a hold-over from an earlier concept worked out with (or by?) Terry Coxon that I am PRESUMING Harry Browne, himself, later decided to scrap (or, at least, simplify).

I have three "Browne and company" books that I have read several times, and the one written in 1981, Inflation-Proofing Your Investments by Harry Browne and Terry Coxon suggests various balancing portfolios BASED ON WHAT YOUR ECONOMIC EXPECTATIONS ARE.  Those are:  Level Inflation, Rising Inflation, Runaway Inflation, Soft Landing, Deflation, and Uncertain (that final one kind of makes me laugh, because, gee, who is certain?).  The menu of investments used are various percentages of Gold coins & bullion, Silver bullion, Silver coins, Swiss franks, Stock market investments, Real estate, Cash, Short-term dollars, and Long-term dollars (sound familiar to you PRPFXers?).  In addition, some of the allocations (in the two inflation scenarios) called for SHORTING long term dollars (Jim Rogers would have liked that one).

These menus of investment possibilities seemed quite cumbersome to fool with, particularly in today's economic climate in which we seem to be bouncing back and forth between deflation and inflation, all depending upon "how low" the FED allows the recession to go before it is afraid the nation will erupt into civil unrest (or the big boys need another bail-out, which is probably the bigger draw) and therefore will perpetrate another "Quantitative Easing" and thus move the indicator over toward inflation.

Well, none of the "menus" were there to handle an eenie meenie miney moe between deflation and inflation, so I wondered if maybe I should make an average between the allocations of those two scenarios, or perhaps WEIGHT the percentages toward hyperinflation as that is what I expect will ultimately have to happen (but WHEN is anybody's guess)?

But I just couldn't push myself into maneuvering all my various investments around to fit into all those different categories and all the associated questions that each can raise (SHORTING an investment, I'd really rather not thank you; SWISS FRANCS, but then somebody or other was really touting the JAPANESE YEN; do I REALLY want to keep around bagfuls of silver coins, blah blah blah) and, honestly, I never really even considered simply investing in the commercial PRPFX fund because I am just a "do it myself" kind of a guy; I like to keep it all in my control, if I can.

Finally, I threw up my hands and read Harry Browne's Fail-Safe Investing for the third time, every word, and realized that two-thirds of that book, maybe more, was about NOT thinking that YOU knew what kind of investments were going to do well and not thinking that ANYbody else knew, either, that was something that for most of us was "been there, done that, and what a mess".  So if one was convinced by Harry Browne, as I was...I even voted for him when he ran for President (and was one of the few Presidential votes in my career that I was really pleased about casting)...then attempting to decide that we were going to be moving into inflation or a soft landing or whatever and investing accordingly completely VIOLATED the entire Permanent Portfolio principle.  Didn't Harry Browne as the capper of his career write this book, two-thirds of which said to NOT do that?

So I scrapped attempting to figure out the percentages of Swiss francs or bags of junk silver, scrapped real estate (which Harry also specifically said was not an investment, but was, maybe, a career)  or shorting anything, and eliminated ALL attempts at speculating, and worked, instead, on actually doing what Harry Browne said to do.  Not Terry Coxon.  Harry Browne.

With Harry Browne's final method (and a pox on the Wall Street Journal...I forget which evil insider now owns it...for saying that senility must have set in), you don't have to guess, determine, or decide much of anything at all.  A broad US stock fund:  25%, thirty-year US treasury bonds:  25%, US treasury t-bills:  25%, and Gold bullion:  25%.  Get all those (you takes your pick as to S&P 500, Russell 3000, or whatever; buy your T-bonds from Treasury Direct or through a broker; you can get whatever gold bullion coins you think are pretty or are from a country you like or have a low premium, etc.), forget them all, and then once a year balance anything that goes outside the 15-35% range (which is selling at the highs and buying at the lows--gee, what a concept!).  End of story.
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Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by AdamA » Mon Aug 29, 2011 3:40 am

pitbullshark wrote: this is basically now a dead thread...
No thread seems to ever really die on this board.  ;)
pitbullshark wrote:
So I scrapped attempting to figure out the percentages of Swiss francs or bags of junk silver, scrapped real estate (which Harry also specifically said was not an investment, but was, maybe, a career)  or shorting anything, and eliminated ALL attempts at speculating, and worked, instead, on actually doing what Harry Browne said to do.  Not Terry Coxon.  Harry Browne.
Here's what MT had to say about Terry Coxon a few months ago...

"I want to get something from Terry Coxon's thinking but I just don't.  It consistently strikes me as either obvious or half-baked.
In my view, Terry Coxon is entirely swallowed by Harry Browne's shadow."

Rings true to me, based on the stuff I've read or listened too.
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Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by AdamA » Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:21 pm

Should be a good day for PRPFX today...
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Re: PRPFX Comparisons to HB PP

Post by Ad Orientem » Fri Jun 29, 2012 5:48 pm

AdamA wrote: Should be a good day for PRPFX today...
Yes indeed. It was +2%.  I'm a DIY guy but PRPFX would easily be my 2nd choice, at least pending some data on PERM.
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