Bogleheads.org

" Nibbling through Telzey Amberdon by James H. Schmitz one chapter/story at a time. A classic although I actually prefer some of his other ones: - The Demon Breed , about a marine biologist outwitting an alien invasion -- that is also set in 'The Hub' universe (Telzey, Trigger Argee etc.) - Th...

"A Feast of Crows" by George R. R. Martin. The 4th book in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. I am really enjoying this series. What blows my mind is that I am an avid reader and yet I didn't know about these well written books until HBO did the TV series Game of Thrones based...

Immoderate Greatness - Why Civilizations Fail by William Ophuls This is a short book of 70 pages and the author lays out the factors that cause all civilizations to fail. It is not specific to any one civilization but makes the point that it is inevitable for all civilizations to fail due to these ...

Interesting how they will handle liquidity- most hedge funds have restrictions on redemptions.

Hedge Funds have done quite poorly of late, missing the magnitude of the market move up.

The best hedge funds are 'invitation only'.

The double layering of fees is likely to kill any benefits of this.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about "worldwide" reversion to the mean and how it might affect my investment decisions. The problem I run into is the world is historically a violent and chaotic place whose mean reversion could easily be away from universality and widespread stability. Pe...

so why were real returns for bonds in the 1950s so poor (your chart shows 0% average real return). I think the answer is "Financial repression". There was a deliberate policy to hold down interest rates at or below to the rate of inflation to help work off the enormous wartime debts. http...

SHiller made his name on that latter piece and I think it is still hotly debated. I think broadly the likely answer is 'yes' (ie too volatile to be justified by fundamentals). Complicating factor as we saw this crisis is the level and performance of the stock market directly drives the ability of th...

We have a plot of 2-1/2 acres of land that is very difficult to sell not only because there are many fewer speculators than in the past (not us, we were given the plot). While there are electric and telehone hookups, there is no water line, so a buyer would have to either drill a well or pay a neig...

Greetings, I am 44, wife is 42. We have been contributing to various retirement accounts over the last 15 years or so without much attention to Asset Allocation, except for the fact I have been trying to remain more in stocks because time was on our side. Now we are approx 20 years away from retire...

There is a lot of advertising saying you may live a long time in retirement, 30 years or more. So, you need to keep your money invested in stocks for growth and inflation protection. If it were up to me, the SEC would ban that as false advertising. Bear in mind, no matter how many people tell you t...

I need to buy some US stocks because they have been lagging behind recently, but that's just rebalancing, not tilting. Japan is up something like 66%? Of course you have 'lost' most of that on the currency, but a phenomenal performance. Stop investing, and start spending! That's what the radical li...

The Wizard wrote:

lwfitzge wrote:where's the projections of Danish tulips? I hear they may be big again

Dutch, not Danish...

Danish hogs . Lester Nessman would have been Danish.

Interesting article Larry. Thanks. For anyone who wants to invest in private equity notwithstanding Larry's case against it, there is an ETF available called Powershares Global Listed Private Equity Portfolio, ticker PSP. Its annualized return of the 5 years ending 3/30/13 is -5.5% vs. +8.5% for th...

FlyingMoose wrote:Is there a US High Quality stock index?

If you do a search on discussions of GMO and Jeremy Grantham's forecasts, lots of discussion how to proxy it.

Recency effect is precisely what we are seeing. Ex post justification of home country bias. The US is now leading the developed world out of recession, so it's easy to be more optimistic-- but the stock markets have already moved on that. Flip side of 'sell US debt and invest in (less well understoo...

People here claim assets of millions of dollars. Savings on that in terms of adviser fees would amount to 10s of thousands of dollars a year. So far, I am not aware that the site has received more than say $25k in donations during its entire history. We had a big rush after Sandy, but in the absence...

Hi. I just turned 46 today! Going to eat cake soon... I have a Vanguard 403b. In it I have Vanguard 500 Index fund with about 53k. I have a stable job and a state pension as well as a 2nd 403b. The state pension currently holds about 160k. The second 403b holds about 145K. Before I make the changes...

The district where I live recently approved a modest new school bond. I don't really know how it works, can I invest in those bonds somehow? Is there a minimum investment amount? Who actually buys this type of bond and how do they go about it? Is it just thrown into a pool of municipal bonds? I wou...

We want to keep the current option: low monthly, but the flexibility to pay off early. The cost of this flexibility is very high. Think of it as "payment flexibility insurance." To pay off $230k in 15 years at 3.5% (the 30-year rate), the monthly payment would be $1,644. To pay it off in ...

Take money off the table - and put it where? Account for taxes, costs and inflation, and there's no safe investment. Over the 1960's to 1980's period in the UK for instance, whilst inflation spiked at times to north of 15%, taxes on inflation bonds wouldn't have allowed you to keep all of the 15% '...

If you feel like it, you might want to find older EM bond data. Not sure, but some or maybe even average EM bond yield spreads to US treasuries ~1995 may have been even higher than in 1998. Maybe that was just in Latin America. One way to look is past downdraws, another is highest yield or spread. ...

Hi Nisi: From wikipedia: 1997 Asian financial crisis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia From SSRN: Search Asian contagion: 188 papers Search eLibrary :: SSRN regards, To summarise in 30 seconds. The Crash began with a default of a Thai property company run by (?) the nephew of the prime minister. I...

Yes, I have also been struggling with this. Retirement in the next few years is likely, and I have planned a 'bottleneck' glide path. I am about 40/60 stock/fixed now and am moving towards 30/70 at retirement. Half of the fixed is in cash/SV/CD/I-bonds. I plan to spend from the cash portion first, ...

Thanks Valuethinker for your explanation. REIT sounds just like Bonds, when interest rate rises, bond prices fall. When REIT yield rises, REIT prices fall. I never heard of this before, I should really go back and read some investment books about REIT. S&P500, reits, bonds all seems overpriced ...

If the dividend yield doubled, back to historic levels of 6% say, then the price would drop to 50. Doesn't this suppose re does not get more profitable? I am doing what in mathematics is called a first derivative. Ie the sources of return from REITs are - dividend yield (initial) - dividend growth ...

Now, all we’re left to calculate is the speculative return. Mr. Bogle, I think, would say that the historical yield should be 6%, so the doubling of the yield over the next 10 years should detract 7% pa from the return. I'm a newbie. Reading this many times, and I still don't understand the specula...

In line with what Bobcat2 said about discount rates. There are huge merits in increasing your income stream in later life with an income stream that is: - CPI protected - longevity insured That is Social Security. It makes far more sense to annuitize/ spend your own assets now if you can increase yo...

At the end of the day, my REIT allocation is exactly the 12% it has been for more than a decade. . How often do you rebalance? Given the fund volatility, you could make a case for daily rebalancing. The reason I like TIAA-RE (for the same reason Swensen does) is you get a relatively 'pure play' on ...

While obviously my thoughts can be seen spelled out in detail in the linked thread, I can summarize as follows, while also addressing some of the above content: - While there may be some similarities between a REIT's revenue stream and bonds, this by itself is not sufficient rationale to support ex...

Yes, normally I'm all for paying down debts. But this one does not start accruing interest until April. I feel kinda bad just letting the money sit there between now and then at 0.10% in a bank account. There has to be something better I can do with it for 9 months, no? Well, you could put that mon...

whoopsy, or the OP, has two total posts on this forum. Both of them in this topic. And he has not come back to this topic since two days ago? I'm reading. Since college, I've been making between 30k and 50k and paying about $1000 a month toward the private non-federal loans. The federal loans have ...

The Roth is more flexible than the 403(b) in terms of withdrawal. In the future you can withdraw contributions for a wide variety of reasons....kids college education, house, etc. That can be good or bad depending on how you look at it. But it is a significant difference between the Roth and 403(b)...

Hi everyone, I wrote to this forum last July, and everyone was so helpful in advising me. I have been extremely busy over the past 12 months work with work and finishing my Master’s degree (which I paid for in full, freeing up about $5-$6k a year which would have normally gone to tuition. BTW my st...

If Vanguard is owned by the funds and doesn't have to satisfy stockholders, why does it pursue growth so aggressively and keep coming up with new funds like this one, of questionable value. Why not concentrate on the stuff that works and keep growth controlled so it keeps on working? There are stil...

Calm man wrote Why would anybody buy this? That's even under optimal circumstances. But now there is a large purchase fee and high ER. If one did want it, what's the rush? Do you really want bonds from Turkey, Russia, Brazil and who knows where else? I think you have a good point here. If someone i...

Old fashioned value investors would wait to buy when an asset has high expected returns, especially when nobody wants it. There’s an old quote, “Buy when there's blood on the streets, even if the blood is your own.” In other words, after markets have crashed and economies have faltered. Perhaps EM ...

AndroAsc wrote Has the Vanguard Developed Market Bond Fund been launched yet? I am not sure if I would prefer bonds from Greece, Italy, Ireland or Portugal over bonds from Brazil and Singapore, the default risk is probably similar... :happy ;-). Look at the yields. The default risk, EU backing or n...

My understanding is that a lot of emerging market countries with good credit don't issue debt in USD. Ex. Singapore issues their debt in local currency (Singaporean dollars). Therefore, this fund will leave out a bunch of the better emerging market credits. That's a relatively new trend ie 'locals'...

Whilst a house with furniture etc in it is easier to sell than an empty one, this is generally not a good idea. The ideal 'for sale' house looks like the owners have just stepped out for a few minutes BUT somehow left the house in a total immaculate state (with far less books furniture and general j...

I would expect the trend to lead to index funds doing better and active funds having a harder time. The more that is known publically about company, the less chance there is for people to be able to take advantage of imperfect information. Securities which don't trade publically and don't have to m...

Hadn't heard this one before: According to Marc Andreessen, co-founder of silicon valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, if the current climate of regulation continues, new companies will be scared off from going public, resulting in a two-tiered system where rich people will invest in private growth ...

I call [nonsense-- admin LadyGeek] . Me too. Plus, both VCs ad PE firms need an exit, and you can't always sell to a strategic investor. IPOs are here to stay. I worry more about the intrinsic value of public shares, given the restrictions put on them by many newer tech firms. Jon Could you explain...

Ok the top 3 markets in the fund (5% each) are Russia, Turkey, Brazil. Russia has defaulted before. As long as oil prices remain high, it will not again. Brazil has 'got religion' and maybe is a safer bet than before. Again as long as oil prices remain high enough to do that development deep offshor...

Emerging Market Bond Fund is available https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/article/fund-announcement-05142013 The new fund is now open to investors during a subscription period that will run through May 30 with exchange-traded fund (ETF) shares expected to be available in early June. OK they ...

Lots of very good stuff here from other posters. Macro view, from someone not part of US SS system, flying over at 30,000 feet. It's important to figure out tax implications, and yet those will change. Basically about non SS income and the impact on your SS and total income after tax. But even havin...

The Greatest Generation!!!! No. Just an ordinary generation, in extraordinary times. The United States was late to the war to save western civilization. Isolationism was strong, particularly in the Midwest, against the generally pro Britishness of the WASP upper class in the North East (Americans s...

By 2008, the hedge fund investments amounted to almost $103 million. That’s a very high concentration of the non-real estate assets in a single asset class. Since when are "hedge fund investments" considered to be a "single asset class"? . Professor X Since forever, really. Hedg...

Dick Couch's: The Warrior Elite: Seal Class 228 The Finishing School Down Range Former Navy Seal writes about the training over the first two books and Afghanistan in the next book and Iraq in "Sheriff of Ramadi" which I haven't read yet. Paul Rory Stewart wrote a book about being a provi...

Dr. Swensen recommends 15% - 20% of a portfolio in REITs. We don't know what Swensen (and Malkiel?) would say *now*. Swensen has been off work with cancer for the past year, and the edition of his book that I have is 2005? There is a later one. Given the volatility of REITs in the 2008-09 period, t...

I'm not a market timer or desire to be a landlord but I just pulled the trigger on a beachfront condo. The condo represents a good value and I felt like my stock values were getting too high at $1.7m. We won't use it for the entire summer so we will rent it out via VRBO. My primary residence is pai...