Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I was just re-listening yesterday to the Harry Browne Money Show episode where he discussed rebalancing bands. The general idea was that anything below 15% didn't provide enough effectiveness and anything over 35% exposed you to too much risk.

Being from Canada, I've been using The Stingy Investor Asset Mixer and Periodic Table. They have full data on Treasuries, TSX, SP500, MCSI, and Gold in Canadian dollars going back to 1954 for some asset classes. I don't know where the data comes from, but I'm using it nonetheless. I import the annua...

If you are talking about the Harry Browne Permanent Portfolio, it can be designed for non-US investors. I have a Canadian version. Stocks should be sector diversified (Tech, Commodities, Health Care, Financials, etc). In Canada, We are heavily weighted towards Financials and Commodities so it's prud...

I don't know if DCAing is better or not, so I'll just share my experience. Early February, I deployed everything I had into the PP (40% of the current total). 10% came in from a tax return. The other 50% has been DCA'd because it's coming out of paychecks. I got lucky because the market had just dip...

Eqbank advertised 3%, then dropped it to the current 2.25% after a short while. Lots of complaints on other forums about that. Still a good rate though. I'm comfortable keeping it in the broker account. It's quickly retrievable, can be deployed to other assets right away, and offers a cash cushion f...

I set up a Canadian PP this year. After lots of hand-wringing, I settled on these choices: Stocks - half VCN, half VXC VCN is total Canada market, including small cap. VXC is total world including US and emerging markets. I may switch out VXC for XAW. Harry Browne recommended home stocks assuming yo...

Gold is not legal tender so it cannot be directly substituted for cash. It's also not traded on Forex as a currency. However, it has the advantage of having a globally agreed upon value and is easily converted to fiat almost anywhere. If you had a price in mind for the tiller, the buyer could offer ...

I was digging into the idea of gold as a currency. That may be the crux of the whole question. Gold is the worlds 2nd most popular currency, behind the US dollar. It has no productive value beyond it's own existence. Since you can literally buy things with gold directly (some things at least), it h...

@ThisDinosaur: If it helps, you can follow the gold "chain of value" further down the line. For every ounce of gold you buy, an ounce is removed from the global supply. You have increased the demand and reduced the supply, putting pressure on gold miners to produce more. In a small way, yo...

So, suppose someone was sold on the rationale of the PP as originally laid out by Harry Browne (four quadrant allocation for the market cycle's prosperity, recession, inflation, and deflation) but wasn't convinced about the particular assets he laid out. This is the question I've been asking myself...