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.........but doesn't the S&P500 generally correlate with "the market"? - would diversification in proportion to the total market have made much difference to the 30% loss from the 1999 top? Hi Ken, The S&P500 is heavily cap weighted which means that the biggest 20-30 names dominat...

I hope that the day will come when you find your way to helping out with the project instead of taking pot shots from outside the gates of the community doing all the work , ataloss LOL - so I guess that what ataloss, myself, and others have contributed to the subject of SRWs is nil? :lol: Hocus, t...

...This is a common comment/mistake made by investors. It is true that you do have some exposure to international business, however the benefit of investing abroad is that some other markets can do well while your US stocks do poorly. Very true. In fact, if you look within the S&P500 at the pri...

If I read this correctly, raddr is referring to me and to my S&P 500 index dominated investments as a single asset class and more specifically, to the S&P 500 as Large Capitalization Growth stocks. I may not have been adequately diversified from raddr's point of view, but referring to the S...

Petey, Nice post! I do think the problem is more basic: Many Americans don't travel out of the country. They seem to have an attitude that America is the whole world. This is so true. We Americans are so insular. I think that we have a little too much of an air of superiority towards the rest of the...

...He has "lost" approx 30% since 1999 but as he is still ahead of the start value of his stash then he's OK with the situation. The second scenario is perhaps similar to MHTyler's situation which, as I understand it, was that he invested a large cash lump sum in stocks at the very top of...

I mean nothing personal by this comment, but where have you been of late, raddr? So far as the SWR board is concerned, you have been missing in action. I didn't know that I was required to participate on the SWR board. :lol: When I have an idea to share on FIRE issues, including SWR's, I choose to ...

If someone has links to hocus' greatest pre-swr hits I could include them. Please exercise caution when putting together this list, ataloss. Raddr argues here http://www.nofeeboards.com/boards/viewtopic.php?p=2821&highlight=coin+toss#p2821 that my "Coin Toss" post--one that I did afte...

Petey, I'm afraid I'm not really up to speed on any of these funds. Looks like the Merrill gold funds have done quite well. I must admit, however, I have a bias against them since they administered our pension plan for a number of years and did a poor job. Their mutual funds had high expenses and pe...

Gold and precious metals I've recently reviewed Gold as an alternative asset class. Over the past decade it has done poorly, the last 2 years has helped recover from a 40% loss in the prior 8 years (excluding the joint effects of inflation and investment fees from range from 0.6% in the USA to 1.7%...

Hi Raddr, What kind of allocation did you have to gold? We only have 4-5% load and 1.65% annual mgmt fees on gold funds here in the UK. Thoughts? Your stated asset allocation from a previous thread was: ScV 32% (IJS, managed account - First Wilshire Securities Mgmt) LcV 4% (BRKA, BRKB, IJJ) Int'l 1...

Raddr, Would you agree that whilst over decades the performance averages out, a diversified portfolio reduces risk & reduces the overall volatility? This would allow for easier living expense withdrawals with timing sales and reduce the worry factor with a more even performance & low down y...

Does asset allocation policy explain 40, 90 or 100% of performance? Petey Maybe none of the above. The backlash was inevitable, although remarkably tardy. This spring William Jahnke published an article in the Journal of Financial Planning with the incendiary title "The Asset Allocation Hoax.&...

At the risk of becoming wearisome, here's yet another Sam and Sally story :D The year is 1929 and all the gurus are predicting that the market will continue its meteoric rise. In October, an Ohio economist says that prices will remain high for years to come, a Yale economist says that increased ear...

Looks good to me. I think that far too much hand-wringing has gone into finding a precise definition for a non-precise entity, the SWR. I might also add that the SWR Police need to lighten up a bit when some poor soul commits a transgression against the definitions that have been proposed on this bo...

Think the Dow will ever see 8,000 again? Yes, and maybe a lot lower. We probably should be somewhere between 4000 and 6000 if you believe in mean reversion. In other words do you think this is real? There was a lot of pessimism here last winter, and lots of folks thought the Market was overvalued. ...

Petey, Great link :!: ...an international equity allocation of up to 20% has a virtually 0% chance of increasing volatility over the short term. Fortunately, this means that investors who allocate from 5% to about 20% of their equity portfolios to international stocks need make no hard decisions abo...

The analyst and onetime writer of technical articles for Barron's, who called the bottom of the '74 bear market, explains that "the U.S. is inflating its head off and depreciating the dollar's head off." Why more people don't recognize this is beyond me. :?

I seem to be incredibly busy these days. between a virus infected computer, renting a house 10,000 miles away, locating property in seattle, lining up personnel for building next summer, the start of another semester with a new prep, locating a new car, and (gasp) dealing with my kids' head lice(!)...

I really don't have the long-term inputs that are necessary to apply the Gordon equation to other asset classes. A rough guess is that future returns will approximate the past if long term earnings growth remains constant and valuations are within reason. Some asset classes, most notably the S&...