Bogleheads.org

That thread doesn't get into the question at all. The lecture I refer to seems to be showing that quite frequently the measures of risk used are actually inappropriate (which curve -- Guassian, Normal, etc) because we can't determine which is correct... so lots of our fundamental basis in thinking a...

Taleb has an article questioning the validity of our ability to measure. Comments from those who can follow the math?

Fat Tails and (Anti)Fragility
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_31K_M ... edit?pli=1

If you invest a sum on a regular schedule, you could certainly have a rule that you will invest each tranche either 30 days from today or on a day when the market has lost at least X% by 3:45PM, whichever comes first.

>but always long term positive slope

Didn't somebody say something about "having reached a permanent plateau" in summer 1929?

>Using IMG_resize

How does making gibberish bigger make it less gibberishy?

>I sow my socks when they have holes instead of buying new ones

If you sow a black one next to a white one, does it grow argyle?

What coverages do you need to have? I don't see why Personal Property is needed since the house is not furnished. What is an appropriate amount of Liability -- it is based on the property value? Should the Replacement Cost be based on tax assessment or market price or cash flow or what? Got my first...

Are returns high enough to compensate for the RISK of another 40-50% market crash? Do you have a long enough time frame before retirement to RECOVER from another crash?

Can't talk about returns unless you also talk about the risks.

>401k loans are nasty if one runs into repayment problems.

OTOH, those who don't HAVE a 401k cannot even contemplate this arbitrage. Something is fundamentally wrong with that...

Sales taxability differs by state.

Russian family about 3-4 miles from us-- very ritzy area. House burned down (richest road in London) and made the national news. Previously burgled for £600k in jewelry and gold. Which is less worrisome than what happens if you are *home* and the burglars want you to show them where your stuff is--...

"The mental picture is I am paying for a physical coin in a vault, that physically exists in reality." Might as well visualize a sparkly unicorn instead. Go back to that quote about "subcustodians." British law allows infinite rehypothecation of assets. There are 1001 different e...

I think its time to create a separate subscription thread for notifications of updates in all of the TIP# threads. I get an email from EVERY Tip thread, and have to visit EVERY thread or I won't get any more notifications (from people making comments). Takes more time & bandwidth than it needs t...

Its a sad, sad day when grocery coupons have a higher yield than US Government paper.

sunofabitch. Talked to the facility, and that new faster fax number is not a fax number at all. So they went back to the old number...

>they deposit the check monthly into my mom's account, usually the first day of the month. Direct deposit is an option? I'll have to talk to them about that... They say they need the bill from the facility by the 11th of the next month, and if they don't slow it down the check comes by the end of th...

I was hoping for some change, but today is the same as yesterday... next year gonna be the same as this year...

I'm wondering if the cost of the back office operations is shared with the mortgage business.

Anyone else recently experiencing problems getting your monthly reimbursement money from Genworth Long Term Care Insurance? Since approx July I have been getting the runaround about why they are not sending reimbursements on time. They are also backdating letters to the care facility asking for extr...

You keep trying to deny what I stipulated. People can pay all their expenses from pension & SS; investment therefore accumulates. Trust funds might be required to accumulate. Plenty of elderly never created IRA accounts. I'm sick & tired of people who insist that tax advantaged accounts are ...

>If one is accumulating, they can contribute to some form of tax-advantaged space, even if it is a non-deductible IRA.

Don't you need to contribute from Earned Income?

While it's great to try and come up with original ideas, your plan is based on faulty interpretations of the tax code, a faulty premise (zero tax advantaged space yet in the accumation phase), and relies on knowing the direction of the market over the next 3-6 months. Wash rule is just a detail aff...

>All the wash sale rule does is disallow taking a loss. If you sold for a gain, you could buy the holding immediately. The scenario is that the equity fund is still going down. But I don't know how the wash rule works with specific shares. The share you buy as a rebalance have gone down, but you wan...

Speaking of the last 5 years... has anyone run the numbers on a rebalance strategy with 5% bands? How many times would a 50:50 investor in say TSM : 5 Yr Treasuries have rebalanced in each year from 2007 to date? I don't have time right now (just did two unexpected plumbing jobs in the last several ...

>annualized volatiliy drifted upward from 20 to 35. ... So one might describe this slight increase in volatility

Sounds like a whole lot of increase; should state in terms of change in Standard Deviation to judge degree.

What do you mean "no wash sale rule for cap gains?" Can you avoid it by selling specific shares?

Retired people with a 50:50 allocation don't have much new money.

Not everyone has their money in tax-deferred accounts. Hitting a 5% rebalancing band can result in a significant capital gains tax when you sell the shares to make the swap. How half-baked is this strategy to minimize taxes: Suppose equities are down and you need to sell from your bond fund to make ...

Munger & Warren are stock pickers. How does that advice relate to index investing?

At age 81, Capital Preservation trumps "diversifying."

>you don't cut and run regardless of which risks haven't paid off lately.

Spoken like an early accumulator!

>5) Which means of course that, rationally, investors should have shifted money from bonds to stocks over the past 5 years. Instead the opposite has happened. > So if the market is efficient then the correct thing to do is follow the market and stay away from equities. The PE10 is still too high, as...

Did they promise a non cockroach infested or rat free LTC facility for you? Is that in the writing? They don't pick the facility, they just have to give you up to $5000 a month to pay for it. The question is about solvency, not care quality. *** "Long Term" means "years" due to ...

> The new quote for me is $3,603 365 day elimination period. Includes 100% home care, but only after the 365 day elimination period. Note: If I eliminate the 365day elimination period for home care only, the quote goes up to $4,413. > Realistically, I think that you will desire "partial" h...

And next month Mutual Funds will be able to advertise the same thing:

Past performance DOES predict future results !!!!!

>allows pension plans to use a 25 year average of corporate bond rates to calculate their funding levels.

"My name is Sparkle! I'm the Pension Unicorn! Just have your accountants inhale my magic fairy dust and your books will balance !!! I'm the modern Recession Solution!!!!"

Just received one of my own & a search indicates a lot of people are asking about how to analyze the offer lately. Tis the season to get those liabilities off the books...

cap gains is 15% Fed but your State might also tax cap gains differently than other income. Hopefully lower...

>Your employer matches you at 50 cents on the dollar

Matching will be going away in the near future, during the recession/depression years.

>If you calculate the present value of the SPIA payments and assume the SPIA is actuarially fair, then your wealth at retirement is divided 50/50. But as you age, the present value of your remaining SPIA payments gets smaller, and if stocks continue to grow, then your effective allocation on your ba...

The unusual nature of this fake is that they didn't just drill from the end and insert a cylinder, recovering the hole on one end. Sophisticated work; only worth doing if you are doing a great many. Wonder if they are using the serial numbers of bars they have bought & melted down & just onc...

No alteration; already got OUT of this risk-fest.

$40B a month for a year... could create 9.5 MILLION JOBS paying $50,000 a year, which perform economically gainful work...

But instead its being used to create more trading profits for banks by taking on their toxic waste...

Wonder what % of workers who have pension plans are public sector, and what fraction of the total pension dollars owed are owed to them? Because it would help the OP assess the security of his/her public sector pension, or to make a political point? --Pete Well, politically you could say that a sig...

Wonder what % of workers who have pension plans are public sector, and what fraction of the total pension dollars owed are owed to them?

See what I mean

Except that legends like "DFII10+2" are incomprehensible.

such studies are useless if they don't break out medical expenses, and consider the differences in medical insurance among those studied.

OK... so the new system presumes you will invest your lump sum in an annuity buying Corporates, instead of much safer Treasuries. This will reduce the lump sum by as much as more than 25%, for a 50 year old whose pension would start at age 65. And the example uses 2007 interest rate data... What's t...

Actually it was the Pension Protection Act of 2006. The phase-in of the using corporate bond rates for NPV calculation started in 2008, with complete phase-in by 2012. It's only optional to offer better rates (lower) if a plan is funded to at least 80% funding levels. http://aging.senate.gov/crs/pe...

So the first responder should always quote the entire OP...

The question to ask is how fast might the PE10 drop to a number where buying in at that level, later on, would make up for the time out of the market. While out of equities, you are making a little money in bonds at much lower risk (although at the moment the government ZIRP policy is distorting tha...

>show approval without having to reply. This saves everyone's time, crowdsources moderation to a large extent,
>

Crowdsourcing of social norms is inherently evil. It crushes minority opinion by making following the mob an even more socially powerful influence.