Bogleheads.org

Very interesting debate on commodities. I confess that I own about 4% in commodities. I use two funds PCRDX and HACMX for this. The reason I chose commodities is because many investment 'gurus' (El Erian, Larry etc) recommend commodity as a 'diversifier'. They recommend it under the category of 'rea...

I think Merriman stopped doing podcasts... Investor radio is very close and has an element of humor in it which makes it very interesting to listen
http://investoradio.net/category/podcasts/

Their recent take down of Suze Orman was hilarious

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND SORRY FOR THE DELAY IN RESPONSE. I want to write a thorough reply so I waited till I got a good chunk of time. I see you have about 83% in equities and about 17% in bonds and cash. So far so good for a 42 year old, who wants to take on a lot of risk. I view my DRIP portfolio as a ...

Look at Figure 14, if we had put our money in VG Wellington or Merriman's Ultimate Buy and Hold portfolios from 1994-2011, we would have had over $400,000 more in our portfolio. We would have a lot better results. But we didn't. You know what the Bogleheads say: Create a plan that reflects toleranc...

Thanks for your reply. I wonder whether you would have had better results if you had about 5-10% in cash for buying at opportune times. This is a question I am always struggling with. Should I hold about 5% of portfolio in cash or short term bonds so that when there is a correction or a crash I can ...

Hi Steve and Dan, Thanks for making your book available for free. I downloaded it and enjoyed reading the book. I view this book more of a life lessons book rather than a investment guidance book as most of the information you outline in the book is advice from others. It was fascinating to observe ...

Thanks for the insights. Looks micro cap is highly correlated with small cap.I was not looking for out performance with respective to small cap , I am looking for asset classes that might have low or non correlation with other asset classes like Large Cap/Small Cap/Commodities etc. From your insight...

There are various threads in this forums questioning whether one needs to have BRSIX on one's portfolio. The discussion primarily focused on the performance of the fund and the fund has been under performing the index for the last few years. I want to approach this from a different angle. Yes BRSIX ...

How about investing $2M in a portfolio of dividend aristocrats across the globe who are financially sound , geographically diversified and have a history of paying and rising dividends for at least 20 years. Avoid financial stocks. If we can get an average yield of 4% (not that difficult). Then you ...

Thanks for giving the link to the presentation. It is interesting to see how high yield corporate bond has different risk/return profile than equities. I thought junk bonds behaved like equity. May be it is time to have a corporate bond fund separately in addition to having total bond market index i...

What are the uncorrelated return streams available to a common investors? Gold Foreign Currency Commodities These three don't produce "return streams". Check it out - http://pragcap.com/bridgewater-reportedly-up-25-ytd-how-do-they-do-it This is what I am looking for Thanks! It is interest...

In other words, unless you are a hedge fund, you cannot have 15 uncorrelated return streams legally.

Ray Dalio who runs the world's largest hedge fund (Bridgewater) recently in supposedly a rare interview to bloomberg said the holy grail of investing is owing 15 uncorrelated return streams. I am having trouble in finding 5 uncorrelated return streams. International developed, emerging market, front...

The best option for multi generation planning is big blue chip individual stocks that are diversified both product wise and geographically and have grown dividends consistently over past 50 years. You can google dividend growth and see. Companies like JNJ,PG,KO,PEP are a few examples. Or you can foc...

I'm presently split about 3% in PCRIX and 2% in DBC. DBC is what I use to rebalance. My interest in PCRIX is due to use of TIPS as collateral, interest in DBC is due to optimum yield approach as Tramper Al describes above. More detail here: http://dbfunds.db.com/dbc/index.aspx Thanks for that. My A...

What do you think about using FFRHX as an inflation hedge? I'm curious to know where you came up with the idea of FFRHX. Did you find it yourself or did someone suggest it to you? . I came across the fund when there was an article in Kiplinger about investment candidates to get good yield on cash (...

Don't know how much you have to invest and your tax rate, but... You may want to look at I bonds to defer taxes. Who knows in retirement you may want to go back to college or you can pass to a child, tax free for eligible expenses. You can purchase $5K through treasury direct and $5K at a bank in p...

Sidney wrote:What makes you believe that TIPS are not priced correctly?

I am looking for a fixed yield of 2.5% over inflation. By end of 2008 early 2009 TIPS were priced to yield about 2.5% over inflation. That is the benchmark I am shooting for.

As TIPS are no longer attractively priced, I am thinking about using FFRHX (Fidelity Floating Rate High Income) as an alternative till TIPS are priced right.

What do you think about using FFRHX as an inflation hedge?

We all know that ETN's has credit risk that is not priced We all know theoretically Commodity Futures are better than Commodity stocks as you add on management risk and competition among companies (risk) to a pure commodity play I view commodity exposure as a hedge against a scenario where the inpu...

We all know that ETN's has credit risk that is not priced We all know theoretically Commodity Futures are better than Commodity stocks as you add on management risk and competition among companies (risk) to a pure commodity play I view commodity exposure as a hedge against a scenario where the input...

Good points and questions. If I just continue to rent (which makes more sense to me at this point in the area I live), I do not need the money before retirement (10+ Years). I did have a 0.75 times mortgage in my home. (25% was the equity). Practically speaking owning a house is more expensive for m...

Recently due to relocation I have to sell the house I owned. After going through the troubles of selling the home, we have decided to rent for a while and also the cost of home in the area we have relocated to (CT) is high relative to the rent. I use the Cost of Home to Yearly rent to determine this...

Thanks for the input.One stupid question what is a FIDO chart???

I was using the investment growth charts from MSN money to compare two funds or compare an actively managed fund to an ETF. MSN money has discontinued they investment tool box. Does any one one know a website where you can compare two funds or ETF and an actively managed fund using the investment gr...

Thanks for the all the input. I was wondering whether there are any studies or analysis on effectiveness of using short term bonds for inflation protection.

I have read many books and others like David Swensen, Mohammed El Erian, Larry Swedroe and many other forums and almost all of them recommend TIPS as a part of a asset allocation. The reasons given are it gives a good inflation protection should we have run away inflation and also provides some sort...

Two important points to add to DDB's comments first is that with ST high quality bonds you don't have as good inflation protection, but reasonably close, but you do have floating real rates. With TIPS you have fixed real rates. second, the advantage of TIPS is really that you can go longer on the y...

For those who recommend int'l REITs, I'd be curious to hear how much they recommend? I have 10% of my stock allocation in REITs. If I divide that among int'l REITs, then I'm left with 5%, or maybe something like a third (if I followed the rest of my domestic to int'l ratio). That works out to a ver...

Most if not all int'l REIT funds/ETFs will have more than half the holdings in Japan, Australia, and Hong Kong. So it's a concentrated bet on those three countries, in addition to being a bet on a specific sector. I have the same concern. Moreover the Austalian allocation is typically on the Westfi...

This is ridiculous line of argument. I acknowledge that I cannot what the interest rates will be by end of this year or next year or year after. I wanted to know though if the FED has a mandate to control inflation, there is very good chance that they will ACT when inflation rears its ugly head and ...

May be this has been discussed before but my search did not return any matches. We all understand the spending on infrastructure, current monetary policies may result in inflation over long term and there are lot of advocates of TIPS (Larry Swedroe, Bill Gross etc). However what if the FED hikes rat...

I too have read lot of these articles favoring index investing due to small costs. However I am looking for comparison with the portfolio I suggested in 08. Can any body who set up a portfolio in 08 provide comparison??

Folks, Now it is more than one year when we had this debate and I enjoyed every bit of it. Please understand I do not subscribe to either active Vs passive and so far I had gone with the human spirit of being able to do better than average. I understand some of you set up active portfolios and passi...

Thanks for sharing the link to that video. Taleb seems to have a great mind, but man, he is the worst speaker I've ever heard. He is SO BAD at getting his points across. - DDB I disagree, he may say things bluntly with brute force but he gets his point across better than many. The problem many of u...

I did not get the disclosures right. I got that Nasem Taleb is short is Roubini short too?
An important think to look for when they make dire predictions.

I hate to say it but there is a heck of a lot of classism on this thread. A CEO of a multi-national company had the right to remodel an office, and the amount spent doing so doesn't surprise me at all. Compare the homes of an average american making 45,000 a year to someone making 50MM a year, and ...

Mohammed El Erian in his book "When Markets Collide" (A very good book and I am 40% in) recommends investing in both Emerging Market Stock and Emerging Market Bond his allocation is rather large and he argues that his asset allocation is looking forward rather backward. He presents a very ...

I know the asset-liability matching is primarily used by pension funds and banks. I just wanted to see whether the same core principle can be applied to individuals. The core principle is trying to match the cash flow of liabilities (expenses for us) to the cash flow of assets (investments we own). ...

I have asked a related question in another forum (TIPS Basic questions) but did not get any answers. So I thought this will be good new topic to ponder. When I was reading about how corporate pension funds manage investing, one concept that came was "Asset- Liability" matching. In other wo...

You are confusing real with nominal. The nominal principal value going down from 1137 to 1000 does not reduce the real yield to maturity. The real yield is calculated by the real price. Google "TIPS deflation" and you will find in the first link what I wrote about this. One of the very go...

Though I believe we are going to see significant amount of inflation in next few years, I want to separate what portion of return is guaranteed Vs what will be the return IF we see inflation. There is always a IF in the return linked to return though we all feel it would happen. Also I am wondering ...

I have read through several forums here comparing directly investing in TIPS Vs VIPSX. My broker (ETRADE) allows me to buy TIPS directly with no fee but charges me a hefty fee when I buy VIPSX . Also I think I can understand what I am getting into if I buy TIPS directly. As I was looking at a TIPS q...

This is a question for long time VIPSX holders. When I look at VIPSX in Vanguard's site, I seea SEC Yield (REAL YIELD) of 3.45%. My question is if I invest 10,000 dollars now in the fund, can I expect atleast 3.45% in interest distributed to me in form of dividends for ever? Ignoring the price fluct...

Interesting thread... to a point. However it is becoming a bit circular. Pop77, since you are convinced your approach is superior, and you have already been investing long enough to have a bit of a track record, why don't you compare your personal performance record over the last say 7 or 10 years ...

If you think by owning these funds I am indexing please let me know how. I try to avoid it. I do not want to pay high fees and end up indexing!! Hi Pop77, I’m going to take this as a serious question. I don’t generally post here, can’t keep up ;), but I do read, as there is too much great informati...

I've created a Yahoo portfolio to monitor these picks. One problem: SSEMX is closed. Pop, would you pick another fund? You could use TRAMX as a substitute . I know it is not a perfect one. I want to invest in this fund but thinking about it . This covers the Middle East and Africa area and GAF coul...

In fact I had that fear and is always in the back of my mind. But if you look carefully there are so many funds based on asset classes. As I mentioned before I have two sector specific funds as I strongly believe that these two sectors will outperform in the long run. Outside those sector funds I ha...

It is very tough for an individual to pick stocks. This is underscored by the difficulty experienced by professional fund managers who seek to do it. My first picks, the better part of 40 yrs ago, were conventional ones for the time, like Royal Dutch and Crown Cork. Thankfully, I read an article in...

pop77, you believe that you have a system, process or talent that allows you to predict future performance better than most fund managers can do, and better than the market as whole. There is a fair amount of research showing that very few if any people can do this, but maybe you can. My question f...