Bogleheads

I have no problem with holding TIPS to maturity. You basically get exactly what you bargained for when they were purchased. So you can safely ignore TIPS pricing until they mature.

However, if you ...

I was looking at TIPS prices (and yields) today

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3020-tips.html?mod=topnav_2_3020

The prices are way up. Also the yield curve is very steep.
Many of the s ...

That is a fascinating chart. It shows the ups and down in the living standard of a family of rentiers from the gilded age to the present. I am thinking of a family like the Pruitts of Southampto ...

A withdrawal strategy in one sentence:-

"Spend only the real income until the capital can be converted to buy an equivalent inflation-proofed safe income."

Of course you need to kn ...

It seems there have been three long periods (roughly 20 years) of declining dividends and zero real dividend growth:

Thanks for that link. I see it was written in July 2005.

From the artic ...

I have about 1,5% in gold.
I plan to rebalance when it hits 25%
So it has a long way to go before I rebalance

This thing I'm thinking about, large population effects, might be related to Cumulative Advantage or what is amusingly called the Justin Timberlake Effect:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazin ...

Why wouldn't this already be priced into the market? It's not like you're the only person to have thought of it. I see this chart on some thread/blog at least three times a week.

Why weren't the su ...

That chart has been going around for well over a year. I remember reading several articles suggesting that most option ARMs default/have defaulted even before the rate resets, so the second "wave ...

The answers here are right on. The CPI-U is not understating consumer inflation.

If anything, CPI-U is overstating consumer inflation at this time. This is because BLS uses Owner's Equivalent Rent ...

A lot of people have been reporting that economic recovery is underway. GDP growth was 3.5% in 2009Q3. Corporate profits are growing again. The stock market is up 60% from the bottom in March. S&P ...

Well I decided to heed some of the good advice from posters like neverknow. Most of my LT Bonds are on Muni bond funds. So yesterday I moved a large chunk from longer Muni funds into cash. Aside from ...

greyfox:

Its good that there are investors like you who sell at the bottom because you present investment opportunites for people like me.

What are you talking about? Muni bonds are not at the b ...

Hey all,

With all these posts/threads I read of people heeding Warren Buffett's advice, is there a reason why most of you prefer to be invested in regular index funds opposed to shares of BRK? BRK ...

My vote is for Mr. Buffett.

Link:

http://moneywatch.bnet.com/investing/blog/wise-investing/good-news-update-nouriel-roubini-versus-warren-buffett/989/?tag=col1;blog-river

I have read that War ...

How the heck will S&P reach 1600? It seems like a hopeless fantasy based on what you wrote upthread:

I feel like we are in the eye of the hurricane, waiting for round #2. 10.2% official unemp ...

I always thought of Municipal bonds as being pretty safe, almost as safe as Treasuries. Low credit risk and a tiny fraction of the defaults of corporate bonds. But then during the credit crisis of 200 ...

Performance Chasing comment does not compute. I have done the exact opposite. I had 50 or 60% equity at start of 2007. By the beginning of 2008 I had reduced that to 30% or 40%. The 2008 market took t ...

Personally if I were that concerned I'd get more TIPS and ST and a lot less LT bonds.

Most of my LT bonds are muni bond fund. You are convincing me that I should move either to a shorter muni fun ...

I gave up on William Bernstein when he proved back in 2005 that there was no housing bubble.

Third, investors need a firm grasp of financial history, from the South Sea Bubble to the Great Depressi ...

grayfox, With all due respect your risk seems to be chasing performance rather than sticking to a plan. Jan 08 you seem to have been 40% equity - now you are 9%. Rhetorical question: how many moves di ...

Anyone else think that risk reduction is in order?
Based on what? I know Bogle gets interviewed and sometimes mentions to make sure investors are fully considering macro risks. But that was a year or ...

Reducing risk.

But grayfox, you and I have a very different view of what the risks are. You are overly exposed to inflation risk - in my opinion. And have a very heavy bet on deflation. It's in you ...

On Friday I took some steps to reduce the amount of money I have at risk.

I did some re-balancing and reduced my equity allocation from over 11% down to 9%
I got rid of a small position in a junk ...

Hi All,

Wow, can't believe no one's really made the EMH case yet! As someone who kinda sorta believes some of it sometimes, here goes: Very Happy

Unlike say, undiscovered US small cap stock A, a whol ...

Is gold in a bubble?

I don't know how to value gold. It pays no interest or dividend. So unlike stocks and bonds, there is no way that I can see to come up with a fundamental valuation that would a ...

Nevermind, I misunderstood the OP.

Any marksmen out there that would like to perform a public service for their fellow citizens?

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/29/economy-grew-percent-quarter/

The economy grew at a 3.5 percent pace in the third quarter, the best showing in two years, fueled by government-supported s ...

I haven't had a chance to watch that show yet, but I will. Thanks for the heads up.

As far as what to do about all the risk we face, what I am doing is reassess what I think the chance of certain d ...

The two graphs below show how B&H and Timer investor's portfolios would grow if they had invested $10K in either 1975 or in 1951. Admittedly, the one starting in 1951 is purely academic since l ...

Once you start withdrawing, the cumulative earnings start going down. At some point cumulative earnings go through zero and the ratio goes to +infinity when you divide by zero.

Then cumulative earn ...

Excuse my rant here, but the phrase "the new normal" annoys me to no end. Whenever I come across it in the news media, it strikes me as almost insultingly stupid.

Everything that has happ ...

I will be taking an extended trip and have a Nikon D40 with the 18-55 mm zoom. I also own the 35 mm DX lens for less illumination.

I was wondering what the photographers on the forum think about ...

The other poster was right. They did report the Median Household Income. That means things are even more out of whack.

Here is something interesting a lot of people may not know. Many people in 1M+ ...

The problem comes in because it's humanly impossible to look at that table without forming a mental picture of a family making $128,000 living in a $4,000,000 house.

I do not think this is happeni ...

Forbes has a chart of Americas priciest real estate markets.
Despite multimillion dollar houses the median household income is comparatively modest.
What am I missing here?

I'll take a crack ...

Wanted to hear your opinions on a portfolio heavy in investment-grade bonds...

Basically you are asking given a choice between investing in the bonds or the equites of companies which is the bett ...

Yes, for the sake of illustration, I am assuming a completely fixed dividend, which is obviously unrealistic.

For the S&P 500, if annual volatility is 18% and the total dividend yield is abou ...

I had most of my large value allocation in DVY. It took quite a tumble since last summer. I got into it because Larry was pointing out in 2004 that The then Vanguard indexed Large Value was to grow ...

I've been simulating a simplified retirement with my home-made Monte Carlo methods. I assume a security that pays a dividend of a dollar amount fixed in advance at somewhere between 0% and 6% of the i ...

Right now I think I want about 36.5% in fixed income for an AA, + or - 2%. I don't really know, exactly. I guess admiral shares are nice, but if I have to give them up for simplicity maybe it's wor ...

I ran the numbers for various stock/bond ratios to determine the gain/loss from 10/09/07 to 08/26/09. All dividends were reinvested, there were no additions or withdrawals, - and there was no rebalan ...

Thinking of putting all retirement money into one fund. Either Wellinton, TR 2015, or Star. I'm 50 and healthy. Have more than 100K but less than 1,000,000 to invest. I can rebalance as I get olde ...

What I wonder is why that much cash is needed at all. Both stocks and bonds generate cash.

Suppose you have one million dollars and need to withdraw 4% per year. That is 40,000 per year or 3,333 pe ...

If your strategy was to spend the dividend, you would have taken a huge paycut in 2009 with diverse collection dividend stocks. Many individual stocks did a whole lot worse, like 67% to 90% cut. T ...

I posted this elsewhere, but I think it is appropriate to this discussion. It is the year-over-year dividend changes for the second quarter 2009 for many dividend-oriented ETFs and funds.

YR-YR DIV ...

Yes, 3.7% is different from 4.0%. But add in SS benefits and guess what?

I really like the way he starts out with failure mode analysis of a 6% withdrawal rate. Since when has anybody sanctioned ...

And both the Trinity study and Otar/URM come to the same conclusion: the SWR is about 4% (including taxes and investment expenses).

Otar seems to be both more pessimistic and conservative tha ...

Today's paper had a write up on 'Unveiling the Retirement Myth' and mentioned it was available for free download (until Aug 31st) ... I took advantage of the invitation and found it quite interesting ...