Gyroscopic Investing

Not only that, for the moment it's beating a 100% total stock market index portfolio and a conservative 55% bond Boglehead portfolio. All assets but stocks are once again positive YTD. Could turn around tomorrow, but it's at least a good reminder of how tough a year this has been for investments.

Still down 4,32% due to tinkering.
I learned my lesson and now I am not going to touch my asset allocation for a year at least!

lordmetroid wrote: Still down 4,32% due to tinkering.

Still down due to poor contribution timing

Pointedstick wrote: Not only that, for the moment it's beating a 100% total stock market index portfolio and a conservative 55% bond Boglehead portfolio. All assets but stocks are once again positive YTD. Could turn around tomorrow, but it's at least a good reminder of how tough a year this has been for investments.

pretty much all 3 of the insight models have been positive for a week now .

I'm up about 3.5% YTD.

I'm down 1.13% still    I was going to ask how that's possible, but I added a substantial amount on 1/12 when TLT was up to $131 from $125.92 at the start of the year.  I'm guessing that's what did it.

This is good to know.

A couple of years from retirement I can handle it for a short while if the only gains come from the new money I'm saving but if I'm putting it in a bag with holes that gets painful.

Don't know how much I'm up or down and don't really care. I only care about how much money I have from one year to the next in total investments, taking stock in January or February.

We retired as of august  just in time for the drop.

But no big deal . We have 2 years of withdrawals set a side to live on and with a 50/50 mix  of equity's and  intermediate and short term bonds we can go years if need be so the fact we dipped is no problem

mathjak107 wrote: We retired as of august  just in time for the drop.

But no big deal . We have 2 years of withdrawals set a side to live on and with a 50/50 mix  of equity's and  intermediate and short term bonds we can go years if need be so the fact we dipped is no problem

My retirement works out on paper well enough if I went for it today which I almost did when I got back from vacation this week but I'll feel better if there is a little ++ to go along with it. This financial environment isn't exactly encouraging. My parents retired in the hyper-inflation environment of the 70's. My (and your) situation seems to be quite the opposite and I'm not sure which is better but I do think it worked out better for my parents as they got rewarded for savings and for holding onto assets that increased dramatically in value (like their house). Kind of hard to see anything like that on the horizon for me (us).

TennPaGa wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: I'm up about 3.5% YTD.

With the 25/25/25/25 PP?

Or the 0/100/0/0 TP ?

The weird Libertarian666 gold/CHF portfolio.
(Now it's about 3% YTD after the late fall in gold and CHF.)

Desert wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: The weird Libertarian666 gold/CHF portfolio.
(Now it's about 3% YTD after the late fall in gold and CHF.)

Ok, I can't remember what CHF is ... Congestive Heart Failure?

I don't know how to invest in that, although it might be a winner.
No, it's the international currency code for the Swiss Franc.

TennPaGa wrote: I knew that CHF = "Swiss Francs", though I like the "congestive heart failure" interpretation... then again, I've come to expect things like that from noted posters like you, Desert . 

But then, I've often wondered why is a Swiss Franc abbreviated as "CHF" (which is up there with "why did the Montreal Expos insignia have an "E" and a "B" on it")?

Anyway, from  Investopedia:

The abbreviation "CHF" is derived from the Latin name of the country, "Confoederatio Helvetica".

Right. They have four official languages, and when the time came to decide what language they would use for the name of the country, they chose Latin.

Very Swiss, I think!

Down 0.3% YTD.  No complaints here.

Desert wrote:

TennPaGa wrote: I knew that CHF = "Swiss Francs", though I like the "congestive heart failure" interpretation... then again, I've come to expect things like that from noted posters like you, Desert . 

But then, I've often wondered why is a Swiss Franc abbreviated as "CHF" (which is up there with "why did the Montreal Expos insignia have an "E" and a "B" on it")?

Anyway, from  Investopedia:

The abbreviation "CHF" is derived from the Latin name of the country, "Confoederatio Helvetica".

Ah, the Swiss Franc.  Thanks for that background on CHF, Tenn.  And here I thought "Helvetica" was simply a computer font.  I learn new things here every day. 

Tech, what is your split between Francs and gold?

About 50% gold, about 35% CHF, the rest mostly US$.

Libertarian666 wrote: About 50% gold, about 35% CHF, the rest mostly US$.

How much are you down portfolio-wise since gold's peak in 2011?

I once looked into doing a USD and gold hedge portfolio, but unfortunately its an urban legend that they're perfectly negatively correlated.  Both can and do go up at the same time, down at the same time, or diverge at the same time.  No free lunch.

MachineGhost wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: About 50% gold, about 35% CHF, the rest mostly US$.

How much are you down portfolio-wise since gold's peak in 2011?

I once looked into doing a USD and gold hedge portfolio, but unfortunately its an urban legend that they're perfectly negatively correlated.  Both can and do go up at the same time, down at the same time, or diverge at the same time.  No free lunch.

Quite a bit, but on the other hand I was up enormously from 1998 (when I bought most of my gold) to 2011, so I'm still doing pretty well overall.

I don't trust the stock market or the bond market as far as I can throw them, so this is my "sleep at night" portfolio.

Desert wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote:

MachineGhost wrote: How much are you down portfolio-wise since gold's peak in 2011?

I once looked into doing a USD and gold hedge portfolio, but unfortunately its an urban legend that they're perfectly negatively correlated.  Both can and do go up at the same time, down at the same time, or diverge at the same time.  No free lunch.

Quite a bit, but on the other hand I was up enormously from 1998 (when I bought most of my gold) to 2011, so I'm still doing pretty well overall.

I don't trust the stock market or the bond market as far as I can throw them, so this is my "sleep at night" portfolio.

Do you intend to hold this mix indefinitely?

Yes. I have had a very high gold allocation for many years. Then in the mid 2000's, I decided to diversify into CHF annuities for retirement income. I have no intention of changing this mix, although because those annuities are not sold to Americans anymore, I probably won't be able to add to them if I get an influx of new money from one of my projects.

Libertarian666 wrote: Yes. I have had a very high gold allocation for many years. Then in the mid 2000's, I decided to diversify into CHF annuities for retirement income. I have no intention of changing this mix, although because those annuities are not sold to Americans anymore, I probably won't be able to add to them if I get an influx of new money from one of my projects.

FATCA?

MachineGhost wrote:

Libertarian666 wrote: Yes. I have had a very high gold allocation for many years. Then in the mid 2000's, I decided to diversify into CHF annuities for retirement income. I have no intention of changing this mix, although because those annuities are not sold to Americans anymore, I probably won't be able to add to them if I get an influx of new money from one of my projects.

FATCA?

Yes, it's one of the many evil effects of that #$%^& law.

Desert wrote: Tech, given the laws of today (FATCA), and the brief peg of the Franc to the Euro recently, would you still have an allocation to Francs, if you were putting your portfolio together today?

Maybe. When they announced the peg, I was certain that it would not last, and I was right.

And you can still buy CHF today in several ways, including at least these:
1. Buy FXF (an ETF invested in CHF);
2. Open a CHF account at Fidelity.

Neither of those has any FATCA implications, and they don't require a very big investment.

Unfortunately, these methods don't have the advantages of annuities, but they are a way to keep cash in what I think is likely to be the last currency left standing when the others collapse.

Now, if you have LOTS of money (several million $) to invest in one instrument, apparently there are significant advantages to "private issue life insurance" via insurance companies located in Liechtenstein, which of course uses the CHF as its currency. However, I haven't investigated this because it doesn't apply to me.

The Eurozone PP is up about 6% now YTD. Might not be a bad year after all!

koekebakker wrote: The Eurozone PP is up about 6% now YTD. Might not be a bad year after all!

Interesting. Looks like that is mostly from stocks and gold. Have long bonds contributed anything?

They sure did, here are some YTD numbers:

ETFS Physical Gold: 6,8%
iShares Euro Government Bond 1-3yr 0.8%
iShares Euro Government Bond 15-30yr 6,2%
iShares MSCI EMU EUR 12,2%

YTD: 6.5%

German-only bonds performed slightly worse:
Shares eb.rexx� GovtGer 10.5+yr (DE) 3,9%

But what will happen to the Euro bonds when the Euro currency is obliterated?

lordmetroid wrote: But what will happen to the Euro bonds when the Euro currency is obliterated?

What happened to bonds in marks, lira, and francs when the Euro was introduced?  IIRC, the Euro was a digital currency only for some years before it became paper.  Maybe that was part of the transition?  I'm assuming a Euro failure would not be as smooth.