Bogleheads

[elmerfudd]

Anyone looked at crawlingroad today?

[Trev H]

CraigR said...

==
From 1979-1999 Large Caps returned 17.2% CAGR vs. Small Cap Value 15.9% CAGR.
==

1995-1999 Large Trounces Small
2000-2005 Small Trounces Large

[craigr]

[Trev H]

A bit more on this classic LUMPER mis-representation of the data 1970-1999 which CraigR stated as...

From 1979-1999 Large Caps returned 17.2% CAGR vs. Small Cap Value 15.9% CAGR

Taylor L - often looks at that 1999 period with a smile on his face, and post data on returns (ending at that specific point).

Wanted to show you the truth...





It was a short lived happy time for Lumpers being on top. In fact the only year starting in 1979 thru to today where a Home Country Bias'd Lumper looked better. It was not actually like US Large outperformed everyting else for 20 years (as indicated), but was more like US Large Swelled to Bubble stage and for a short (although but sweet in the Lumpers eye) time did manage to do as well with doom and demise soon to follow that peak.

Now you have had the Lumper Side of the story, and the truth, plainly shown.

Choose HCB Lumper if you will
_________________
22.5% US LCB, 22.5% US SCV, 10.0% US REIT, 22.5% Intl LCV, 22.5% Intl SCB

"As you can probably tell by now, my sympathies lie with the splitters"

Trev H

[dumbmoney]

1979-2008:

Russell Top200 index (mega cap): 10.5%
Russell 1000 index (large cap): 11.0%
Russell 3000 index (all cap): 10.9%
Russell 200-1000 index (mid cap): 12.4%
Russell 2000 index (small cap): 10.8%
Vanguard S&P 500 fund: 10.8%
_________________
I am pleased to report that the invisible forces of destruction have been unmasked, marking a turning point chapter when the fraudulent and speculative winds are cast into the inferno of extinction.

[MediumTex]

Anyone else in favor of toning down the "Lumper" talk?

I don't see how that adds anything to the discussion.

The PP is, by definition, a conservative strategy. Following it as prescribed by its creators doesn't make one a "Lumper."

If a PP discussion thread is too confining to fully discuss more aggressive equity strategies than those advocated by Harry Browne and adherents to his views, then perhaps a new or different thread would be a better place for that discussion.

I get the point that backtesting shows that over some time periods equity allocations other than TSM may have provided higher returns in a PP.

Can we move on now?
_________________
"A Permanent Portfolio should let you watch the evening news or read investment publications in total serenity."
-Harry Browne

[daniel]

[HBfan]

[Wonk]

Ok, now that we're done with the stock argument, back to gold for a moment.

I can't find a HB resource for a recommended % of gold held outside your home country. The best I can gather is he said "some" should be outside the country. Well, that's subjective.

What are your thoughts? 50% of the gold portion (eg-12.5% of portfolio)? Less? More?

I like physical, but it's impractical outside the home country. So then you're forced to deal with paper promises again--which defeats the purpose of buying gold in the first place...

[MediumTex]

[Quasimodo]

Financial writer Andrew Tobias advocates pre 1965 US silver dimes and quarters for a personal precious metals holding. They're still legal tender, the increments are small enough to be handy for buying food or daily necessities during a financial crisis (don't spend them at face value today!) and they're easily recognized as bonafide US silver coins, minimizing debates about their value. A gold krugerrand might be worth several thousand dollars - not so handy at the grocery store, if that's a possible use for the coins you have in mind.

Personally I also like Central Fund of Canada - gold and silver bullion in a Canadian bank. That the shares usually (always?) trade at a premium to net asset value seems to me to simply add to the volatility, which isn't all bad in the context of the PP.

http://www.centralfund.com/

http://www.goldstockbull.com/a....-own-gold/


John
_________________
Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deeply. Let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can.

Hafez, poet (1315-1390)

[sdrone]

Some of the charts from Trev H have referred to intermediate term treasuries. Can I assume these are 5 year treasuries? The ETF choices seem to be 3 to 7 year treasuries vs. 7 to 10 year treasuries.

[Tramper Al]

[WileECoyote]

Hey guys, this is the first investing forum I've ever run into and I was so intrigued that I just spent the last two days reading through the whole thing. It's been extremely informative. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to share their thoughts. There was a bunch of things that I read throughout that I wanted to reply to but I had to wait til' I got to the end, so forgive me if it seems a little out of order...and long!

First of all I ran into this because I was trying to research Bridgewater's All Weather portfolio. I'm a big fan of Swensen's and his logical thinking but his 'retail' portfolio always seemed too heavily weighted with equities, then we hit this recent crisis and you could see the result for every portfolio with strong equity bias. So the All Weather is supposed to be equally weighted among different uncorrelated assets that perform at different times for, in Bridgewater's words, rising and falling growth, rising and falling inflation. They have the luxury of using leverage to jack up the lower returning assets to raise the overall expected return. So to comment on someone's post saying that they got killed late in the year they should be aware that Bridgewater's proprietary market signals alerted them that we were heading into a period of severe economic distress so back in October '08 they moved their clients into what they called the "Safe Portfolio", their statement was something along the lines that it was better to preserve capital at this time and live to fight another day. Alarming coming from a company that runs an "All Weather" portfolio that they would be scared into shifting their assets. I recently found their "Safe Portfolio" consists of the following:

40% Inflation Linked
30% T-Bills
20% Treasury Bonds
10% Gold

Even though they have tremendous insights into markets they are smart enough to know that they can't outguess ("predict") what the market will do and made another balanced portfolio for their "safe" portfolio.

Up until now I only knew of the Permanent mutual fund and had dismissed it before as overly conservative. However trying to research the All Weather and examining what Yale, Havard, and other intelligent institutions do has broadened my view of markets. Reading Bridgewater's stuff is interesting too b/c they have a very wide and I think realistic view of markets. So I was absolutely amazed when I saw that you could create a portfolio with only 25% equities that could come near a long term 10% CAGR with much of the rest of the portfolio in bonds! The HB PP seems to very closely match what the All Weather portfolio does, have a few assets that react violently to different market conditions, and have little correlation to one another.

The hard part for me is it's simplicity I think. After reading all the posts I think that's the hard part for others that leads to the temptation to alter it. I am used to looking at funds, managers, their investing habits\styles, and utilizing good long\short, merg arb strategies to complement equity\bonds all that sort of thing. But I always felt that on a fee\turnover adjusted basis there was a better way, and this just might be it. I am really shocked at the simplicity and how effective it is for what intuitively, to me anyway, would be a somewhat low returning collection of assets.

[WileECoyote]

Sorry this is so long but if I don't get it out now I'll probably forget.

One of the things I like about Dalio is his insistence that your portfolio should be "timeless" and work in ANY country at ANY time throughout history. So for those that like to run heavy equity weighted portfolios that seem to have done well over the last 30 years in the US, how would a similar portfolio have worked in Japan for the last 20-30 years? His point was that people invest based on the basis of their life's experience. Most of us have never been in a debt deflation period, so we don't account for that. People think that we can't have deflation or too much ravaging inflation b/c we're the US, that can't happen. Well Japan has a very advanced economy and I'm pretty sure going into this seemingly endless downward spiral they didn't say hey, let's do what we can to screw ourselves for the next 20 years or so. They've thrown the kitchen sink at the problem, during a booming global economy to boot, and still have not had any luck. I'm not saying we're in the same boat as Japan but it proves the point that you never know what could happen. Past is not prologue.

So therein lies the danger of those that rely on back tested data for the US and conclude it's safe. I don't know how people can't pick that up, when our current crisis was due in large part to the alphabet soup of CDOs, CLOs, CDO^2s, ABS junk, etc that were built on back tested models that relied on the assumption that markets always had risen and never fallen at once. TA DA! They back tested and modelled to perfection, got AAA ratings, then an unforseen (by them anyway) event destroyed a tremendous amount of wealth because they relied on backwards looking models. If there was ever a giant flashing warning signal I would think that could be it. But people blissfully plug away with their Excel spreadsheets fiddling to eek out the best portfolio..... that WOULD have worked best from 1970-something to present in the US and conclude that it's optimal. That's the hardest part for people I think. Know what you don't know and accept it. It's hard for me because I, along with most, think I can outdo everyone else. Amusing when you step back and look at it like CragR or Tex had said earlier.

BTW, I also got to see one of Bridgewater's docs and it showed a basic formula for their static All Weather portfolio. Their Pure Alpha I believe is based off of this, but uses client mandated base beta portfolios that they create with derivatives, lever, and then use various levels of portable alpha to generate even higher, uncorrelated returns.

Here's the gist of it:
They break their portfolio into four quadrants covering rising and falling growth, and rising and falling inflation representing normal cyclical expansion and contraction. Assets are placed in the buckets that most favor them. Assets are then given equal weight within each bucket, and each bucket is assigned an equal weight in the overall portfolio. So each bucket has an equal impact when it's favored, the asset mix is roughly as follows:

Rising Growth (25% Risk):
Equities
Corporate\mortgage spreads
Emerging market debt spreads
Commodities

Falling Growth (25% Risk):
Nominal bonds
Inflation linked bonds

Rising Inflation (25% Risk):
Inflation linked bonds
Commodities
Emerging market debt spreads

Falling Inflation (25% Risk):
Equities
Corporate spreads
Nominal bonds

So that's it. Figured I'd pass it along as I had a really hard time finding it. And by spreads I am assuming they mean short treasury long whatever bond they are referring to.

BUT it shows a similar style and thought process to the HB PP portfolio.

Sorry for taking up so much space, brevity never seemed to be my specialty....

[grayfox]

What are the annual returns of the Bridgewater All-Weather Portfolio? I am looking for simple year-by-year list from when the fund started until the present

I would like to see a comparison to HB PP.

Also what was the max drawdown from the peak in 2007 to whenever it hit bottom.

[WileECoyote]

Lbill posted the doc that I've seen on various sources with their returns up until 2007 I think. See page 15 about halfway down because I can't post links. Search for Bridgewater to jump down to it. Also note All Weather is their static, long only allocation.

I've seen a few sources say in 2008 they took a 20% loss before their indicators prompted them to move into the safe portfolio.

Their Pure Alpha which is dynamic and long\short was positive for the year, +8.7 net of fees, and Pure Alpha II which is another step more aggressive was +9.4 net of fees. Not too shabby.

BTW I don't have any insider info, this is all gleaned from articles and findings on the internet. Tough to find because they only really deal with endowments, pensions, and SWFs- I don't think they take individual HNW clients.

[grayfox]

Which document shows annual returns through 2007. The document I see is "Engineering Targeted Returns and Risks" by Ray Dalio of Bridgewater, updated 12/31/2005. It is only 6 pages. I has a table of quarterly returns from Q296 through Q42005 on page 3 . On page 6 (last page) it shows Last 1,2,3,5 annualized returns through Jan-07.

Through Jan 07 it shows Last 1 Year annualized return -0.7% so does that mean 2006 was -0.7% ? Also you think 2008 was -20% If that is right then all I am missing is annual return for 2007 and I can compare 1996-2008

That Dalio document is only 6 pages. Which document has 15 pages?

If you have a link, you don't have to be able to post links, just type in the url as text.

[Trev H]

Sdrone asked...

==
Some of the charts from Trev H have referred to intermediate term treasuries. Can I assume these are 5 year treasuries? The ETF choices seem to be 3 to 7 year treasuries vs. 7 to 10 year treasuries.
==

Below - the Bond Return Data that I keep in my 1970-forward set.
The ITT = 5 Year T Notes (older stuff), then changes to Vanguards InterTerm Treasury Fund (where the history is available).


LTT = Long Term Treasury:
==================================
Tamasset Spreadsheet - LT Gov Bonds 1970-1987
Vanguards Long Term Treasury 1988-2008

ITT – InterTerm Treasury:
=========================
Tamasset Spreadsheet - 5 Year Treasury Notes 1970-1991
Vanguards InterTerm Treasury Fund 1992-2008

STT = Short Term Treasury
============================================
1970-1977 5 Yr T Notes – 1.5bp/month
1978-1991 US Treasury 1-3 Yr – 1.5bp/month
1992-2008 Vanguards Short Term Treasury Fund

TBILLS = Risk Free Benchmark for Sharpe:
========================================
T-Bills 1970-1983
Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund 1984-2008

ITB = InterTerm Bonds:
======================
Ibbotson 1970-1972
Lehman Brothers 1973-1986
Vanguards Total Bond Index Fund 1987-2008

TIPS = Treasury Inflation Protected Securities:
===============================================
Synthetic TIPS 1970-2000
Vanguard Inflation Protected Securities Fund 2001-2008
_________________
22.5% US LCB, 22.5% US SCV, 10.0% US REIT, 22.5% Intl LCV, 22.5% Intl SCB

"As you can probably tell by now, my sympathies lie with the splitters"

Trev H

[WileECoyote]

Sorry for the confusion. That's the doc I'm talking about, I just meant it was on page 15 of this thread.

I hadn't looked at the returns in that doc recently, I remember the annualized chart at the end went through sometime in 07, but I didn't recently look at the chart earleir in the doc that showed returns that only went to 05. That's the only place I've ever seen their perfomance numbers listed and not just loosely referenced in an article about Bwater. So basically I'm not much help, sorry. Maybe someone else here has some more info and can shed some light on it?

[MediumTex]

Here is a backtesting model that might be useful:

If you backtest over a period of 500 years, here is what I suspect you will find:

1. equity markets of industrial economies that are expanding is a great place to be because this is where the most wealth is being created

2. money issued by a stable government is more likely to hold its value relative to other currencies

3. long term debt issued by a stable government with a free market and a strong military tends to get repaid (unless the government gets involved in a war and loses or gets overthrown)

4. gold is gold, you just have to take measures to prevent thieves from stealing it or governments from confiscating it

Sorry, no chart.
_________________
"A Permanent Portfolio should let you watch the evening news or read investment publications in total serenity."
-Harry Browne

[WileECoyote]

I couldn't agree more. That to me is back testing and making realistic assumptions.

That's what gets me about this PP, it's so simple but so effective. You can alter assets to get a better mix over different time periods and countries, but this is really one of the few that is well diversified and effective.

In a way it's like making the determination that indexing is usually the best way to go. Yes you can get a manager who adds alpha to an asset class but it's hard to find ones that can do so consistently on a fee adjusted basis. This is kind of the mental equivalent of indexing at the asset allocation level. It's not the absolute optimal for every situation, but may be one of the best compromises I've seen.

[MediumTex]

Here is a quote from Rule #11 in "Fail Safe Investing" that I like:

[Clive]

Rather than looking to gain a percent or two more using SV/ISV instead of TSM, focus on the cash component instead and potentially you might gain more benefit. In concept its relatively easier to uplift 'cash' investment benefits than it is to uplift stock returns.

Assuming yearly reviews, applying a rule of if the stock price > its 200dma AND the bond price > its 200dma, then invest the cash component in stock instead for that year.

The theory behind this is that if both stocks and bond prices are relatively high and rising then both bond and stock yields are in decline, which implies that the market is predicting growth and/or interest rate cuts (which generally results in further increases in stock prices).

From the backtests I've made this would appear to uplift total investment benefits to comparable or better than buy-and-hold, whilst only marginally increasing the worse years losses over that of conventional Permanent Portfolio.

In effect the 25% stock exposure can be expanded up to 50% using this approach, and it would seem to have worked well over periods where PP has lagged during strong Bull periods, whilst generally only occurring relatively infrequently (on average only 25% to 30% of years are cash invested in stock years).

I'd be interested to see if anyone else could clarify this.

[MediumTex]

For those seeking to juice PP returns, there are also many opportunities for creative tax saving strategies.

Opportunistic Roth conversions are a great opportunity (if you're eligible).

Realizing that it may not make sense to hold certain assets in a tax-deferred vehicle that will result in eventual taxation as ordinary income, as opposed to just holding it in a taxable account and paying lower capital gains rates upon eventual liquidation. For example, a stock that pays no dividend is, in many ways, the perfect tax deferred investment vehicle. Ask Warren Buffett. Part of the reason he is so rich is that he has never paid a penny of tax on 99% of his wealth.

As I have noted before, U.S. Savings Bonds (Series EE and I) are darn near perfect PP cash holdings.

Just some stuff to think about.

***

BTW, and on another topic, whether you have read "The Black Swan" or not, the talk that Nassim Taleb gives in the link below prepares the mind well for understanding the elegance of the PP approach to investing. I've read the book and I still really enjoyed the talk.

http://fora.tv/2008/02/04/Nass....ier_Future

Here is a great line:

"In the same way that religion has been called the opiate of the masses, today the stock market is the opiate of the middle class."
_________________
"A Permanent Portfolio should let you watch the evening news or read investment publications in total serenity."
-Harry Browne

[MarcDeMesel]

Image the PP in Zimbabwe with true hyperinflation for decades in a row.

One big problem would be that you are rebalancing yearly to cash and bonds, selling valuable inflation proof stocks and gold. Every next year your cash and bonds are wiped out.

I did not do the calculation but my instinct says that you are not keeping your purchasing power with the PP in Zimbabwe style hyperinflation.

This due to the rebalancing that causes you to dump every year again a big part of your portfolio into a bottomless pit. You would have been saved by simply not rebalancing.

Ofcourse this is not possible, as my brother explained, because if you do not rebalance, you will end up with no pp portfolio as one day bonds and cash could just be taken of the market replaced by a new currency, meaning you only have gold and stock in your pp remaining, because you don't rebalance.

But it does show that one should not rebalance too often. The fewer you rebalance the less you get destroyed in hyperinflation. Once a year seems to be already a recepy for disaster in Zimbabwe. So that is also the max I would say.

Anyone did some thinking on this scenario before?
_________________
My blog about the European Permanent Portfolio: http://europeanpermanentportfolio.blogspot.com/

[MediumTex]

I don't think that a Zimbabwe PP would make a lot of sense to put together in the first place.

One of the assumptions on which the PP is based, IMO, is that it is being set up in a modern industrial economy with a reasonably stable government.

To me, if an economy begins to transition from wealth generation to wealth plundering and its political system begins to transition from stability to chaos, there is typically enough lead time to switch your investments to another economy and political system.

This is not always the case, of course (ask the French), but there are usually plenty of warning signs.

Zimbabwe has certainly provided the prudent investor with ample opportunities to seek greener pastures (I probably would have taken my capital elsewhere when they changed the name of the country from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe).
_________________
"A Permanent Portfolio should let you watch the evening news or read investment publications in total serenity."
-Harry Browne

[DP]

Hi,
I received my annual report for PRPFX so I thought I would try to nail down the allocations better, since they mix the LT treasuries with the ST. I took some liberties with rounding to get some simple estimates that add to 100, but in all cases I believe the values are accurate within 1%.

[MediumTex]

[eurowizard]

Harry Browne would be rolling in his grave is he knew that there was 20 pages on his portfolio of 25% gold 25% LT bonds 25% cash and 25% stocks.

[DP]

Tex,
The annual report lists two Treasury Bond strips (Principal only), which I assume is another way of saying zero coupon. I included these with the LT treasury bonds as they have a maturity of 9 and 11 years. They account for about 3.4% of the total portfolio. All the other treasuries were just listed as bonds or notes.

I wasn't questioning the financials as an investment, merely pointing out that they don't fit the criteria of "aggressive growth". I think that value stocks (which the bank stocks probably are) would fit with the Permanent Portfolio philosophy, at least better then growth.

Don

[meckaneck]

Craig, Tex, Others,
Is anyone concerned about the PP's performance if/when long term bonds under perform over long periods? It appears this has not happened since 1972.

[craigr]

[juhrio]

yes, gold will bail out your long-term bonds. then what most likely will happen is what happened in the 1980s. gold goes down and you ride the higher interest rates for a few decades. I really think we are living the late 60s and 1970s all over again. 2008 seemed a lot like 1973-74.

[brswif00]

It sounds like the thread is looking for a change of pace, so let me try to oblige. And maybe this most un-Boglehead thread can go even further into heresy.

I have a lump sum coming in from a property sale, and the investment choices aren't very appetizing right now. So I am considering applying it to the classic HBPP. But I think gold is going to fall back into the $700s when it becomes clear that deflation is going to overpower inflation. Obviously that's just a guess, but it's my guess, so I don't want to put 25% into gold at these prices [or into bonds, or stocks, or cash, nor do I want to keep it in housing].

What I would like to do is put on a call spread to Jan 2011 that would give me about a 500% return if GLD exceeds $1250. When I last looked there are a variety of strikes that could get close to that, starting at about buy $100 / sell $125. I would like to be protected against a 50% move in GLD, so I would only need to invest 10% of the full allocation, or 2.5% of my portfolio [10% of 25%].

I would leave the other 20% of the portfolio in cash. But then I started thinking, what would happen if more of the non-cash components were created synthetically with options? I know HB would not care for this, but I think it is interesting conjecture. I haven't looked at the TLT or equity call spreads yet, maybe they are unaffordable given the volatility.

There are some tax problems with using options versus rebalancing. But if you stick to the longest LEAPs, you get cap gains treatment, and obviously the losses are deductible in a taxable account.

I will do some more research on this and post any results, but I am curious if anyone else has looked at this implementation of the PP. The appeal is that it is even stronger in down markets, because you only lose the net premium of the call spread. And you get a magnified gain on the rising positions up to the strike of the sold call. [Leverage!] Of course if you set the sold call too low, you could miss some upside, so you would want to keep a very wide spread.

There is also a compensating advantage in that you can't procrastinate on rebalancing. The calls expire on a fixed date, in this case the third Friday in January 2011, so you have to put on a new spread then.

This would work better at a time of reasonable returns to cash. But there would be some comfort in having an HB PP with 85% in cash, and 5% each in GLD, TLT, and TSM LEAP call spreads.

Thoughts?

[Tramper Al]

[WileECoyote]

I think I'm in the same boat with a lot of people. I like the way the portfolio looks and works but shifting all your assets can be a bit intimidating.

For me gold is the tough one because so many investors I respect had declared it a poor investment over the years. However John Paulson who runs what is probably the most successful hedge fund of recent times is now 30% GLD in his portfolio, owning about 9% of all the shares outstanding for GLD. That's a lot of scratch. And he has about another 7% or so in gold miners. A few other value investors have been adding gold and miners to their portfolios so it seems they are coming around to the idea too.

Now I'm not saying people should mindlessly copy HFs, but Paulson (John, not Hank....) seems to have a very good grasp of the big picture. He went big on CDSs earlier, made a killing, then moved into mortgages and sub-prime to pick up the pieces. And he's been steadily buying GLD, this wasn't left over from a pre-crisis position.

[brswif00]

[Quasimodo]

It's unusual for everything to head south at once. From the Bloomberg website:

U.S., Europe Stocks Fall, Commodities Drop on Recession Concern

Bloomberg 06/22/2009 11:13 AM
Treasuries Advance as World Bank Cuts Global Growth Forecast

Bloomberg 06/22/2009 09:27 AM
Gold Falls in New York as Dollar Climbs on Deepening Recession

John
_________________
Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. Let it cut more deeply. Let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can.

Hafez, poet (1315-1390)

[Tramper Al]

[craigr]

[MediumTex]

There is also a lot to be said for being able to just set it up 4 x 25% and get on with your life.

The setup described a few posts up would have me looking at the monitor ALL the time. I do this enough as it is--I don't need a wagon full of nitroglycerin sloshing around behind me until January 2011.

But I wouldn't have any problem at all with someone who said they were going to deploy their PP strategy in 10% increments on a monthly, quarterly or some other basis. That makes perfect sense to me.

Thus, if you have $1 million, put $100,000 in the PP today, another $100,000 in a month, and so on. To be more precise, you might do 10% on day one, then 1/9, 1/8, 1/7, etc., in order to account for earnings on the cash, which would presumably be in some type of fixed income instrument.

There's no right answer to this question; these are just my thoughts.

I would note, however, that gold actually does quite well during periods of deflation. This is a hard concept to fully grasp, but if you think about it long enough it begins to make sense. The key is to understand the economic conditions that lead to deflation and you begin to see that these are the types of conditions that make people want to own gold. Just look at 2008--the deflation fear started to set in and the price of every commodity dropped...except gold, which remained in a pretty tight range, even as the dollar and treasuries soared.

When the market is this screwed up, gold is always going to have a seat at the table.
_________________
"A Permanent Portfolio should let you watch the evening news or read investment publications in total serenity."
-Harry Browne

[MarcDeMesel]

[MediumTex]

[WileECoyote]

[dumbmoney]

[billb]

Apologies if I missed it, but has there been any analysis of the portfolios presented over the last 10 years during the era of '0 returns' in U.S. equities?

[MediumTex]

[MediumTex]

[Wonk]

Being the 1000th reply to the original thread, I just had to say how much I've enjoyed the information and varying opinions of this portfolio theory. It's changed my investing life!

Thanks to all who have contributed--including allenmickers. Didn't think you'd be responsible for all this, did you?