Thanks everyone. Your inputs are most valuable since I am still new with precious metals. Since COVID I hold about 5-10% gold stock, IAU, just to reduce the portfolio volatility. Sold some when it reached over $2000 an ounce and bought more when it down at $1,800. If @sma3 is right, the fight over debt ceiling is coming. Hope both sides can resolve this. So far, it serves as a good diversifier to stocks and bonds with little correlation.

Friend bought one mill $$ pure gold bars last wk from Texas precious metals

Hope @johnN's friend has some place safe to store them.

@yogibearbull
Hi sir - two separate accts
Tsp: all tsp fund divided evenly- s i c and tsp L2040 L2045 L2050, 10% G fund
Sep Ira: @ Vanguard have Vang 2040 2050 and also Iwm vo voo etc other vehicles mentioned (tsla snow lcid Pltr etc)
Thank you for the clarification
Did not pay attention if LFunds in tsp are more conservative than target date fund in Vang or fidelity etc... Thank you for pointing it out

@LewisAbraham... Sir try a little cover call iron condors or csp
Definitely spite it up
Do tqqq Tna Tsla soxl soxs
Keep you at the chart bench from markwt open until end weekday if you have free time lol
1-3% of mine swing trades csp or cc (mostly csp)
Csp cc Delta 10 15 definitely worth a look

@Sven - Picking up on what Mike said, ETFs that invest in the physical metal are less risky (or, at least less volatile) than funds that invest in gold mining companies. So the metal itself experiences less volatility than a group of mining companies inside a fund might. But, longer term there’s more potential profit in the mining companies. I’ve seen anywhere from 3-8% recommended by various observers as the “right” portfolio exposure. And some won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.
The Permanent Portfolio fund, PRPFX, keeps 25% in gold and silver bullion. And, honestly, I don’t know how they manage to do that and still keep the fund’s volatility as low as they do. That’s one option for those seeking modest exposure to the precious metals. And, a lot of natural resource funds also hold some - usually only in small proportion.
The biggest problem with gold is its utter unpredictability. 50%+ multi-year gains followed by 30% or greater multi-year declines are not unheard of.
2000 + 50% = 3,000
3,000 - 30% = 2,100
:)

I used to get two or three print papers and take hours to read every article. Reading on line is not the same, although if the website provides you with a "print edition " it is close.
Still I have to ask myself, if I go to the library and grab the Economist, why does it take me an hour to work through it, as opposed to 5 mins with the online version?
Online I look at headlines, no pics and move on.
While the NYT, new Yorker ( remember the three part articles!) and WaPO have all been dumbing down their content, online cannot approach a printed hard copy to capture your attention

Just to add to the above ….. Sold all remaining shares of PRWCX 7/5/22 @ $32.42

”If I own a volatile fund, I expect it to go down more than the market. But I also look for it to more than make up that underperformance on the upswing. And I'll wait that out, unless there are specific reasons for me to doubt the fund or the management going forward.”
We’ve discussed in the past that this approach works if one has socked away an amount of cash sufficient to outlast a multi-year bear market so they don’t need to pull money out of a deeply depressed equity portfolio. Folks have mentioned holding anywhere from 3 years worth all the way out to 5 or more years worth of cash. If I remember correctly, @msf is one who does that . Different strokes. I don’t hold a cash reserve (but do have a pension), so my inclination is more to limit big swings in investment portfolio. The “upside” would be that I’m 100% invested all the time.
BTW - The folks that hold a lot of reserve cash have done very well the last couple years. I never could have envisioned 2 or 3 years ago the kind of returns cash / cash-like investments have delivered the past couple years. To have anticipated that requires one with more intelligence and foresight than I possess. Wasn’t it only 2 years ago that Powell was describing inflation as “transient.”?

After the dot com bubble burst and my largest holding was down 10% more than the market (i.e. around the figures Lewis is using), I got a cold call from someone pitching professional portfolio management. I still remember my response: I already have professional managers, and I started naming the managers of that fund.
Some of us were not entranced by the ability to trade Fidelity Select funds seven times a day (hourly pricing) back then, and don't feel the need to trade ETFs tick by tick today. I make a change when I can no longer answer the questions: what do I expect from this fund and why is it part of my portfolio?
If I own a volatile fund, I expect it to go down more than the market. But I also look for it to more than make up that underperformance on the upswing. And I'll wait that out, unless there are specific reasons for me to doubt the fund or the management going forward.
Regarding VFORX, I generally agree that for many employees "one and done" is a great option. I would have loved to have had any sort of asset allocation option available when I started working and had no clue what I was doing.
If one is willing to pay double the expenses (0.11% ER vs VFORX's 0.06%), there's a fixed asset allocation fund that has done a little better. FFNOX correlates 100% with VFORX according to Portfolio Visualizer. I didn't believe that either, but that's what it says.
PV's performance analysis reports FFNOX having higher annualized returns, lower volatility, smaller max drawdown (based on monthly figures), better Sharpe ratio (to be expected given higher returns and lower volatility), even closer stock market correlation. Though its best year was inferior to VFORX's.
Of course all of these differences are rather small. This is simply an alternative for those who eschew Vanguard or don't like the idea of glidepaths.

If one is concerned about the bubble factor in traditional market-cap weighted S&P 500/Total Market Indexes, it is easy today to have a value factor overlay to the index. VVIAX has beaten 74% of its peers in the past 15 years, 86% in the past ten years. Its expense ratio: 0.05%. But if you want to avoid "value momentum" as odd as that sounds, you could just equal weight the index to avoid having too much for instance in the FAANG stocks in the S&P 500 or too much in financials and energy in a market-cap weighted value index. RSP comes to mind, 0.20% expense ratio--still indexed in my view. In other words, active managers have some explaining to do.

@Baseball_Fan I don’t really agree, but a lot depends on how you define the term indexing. If one thinks of tracking the S&P 500 as the only kind of indexing, you could draw a bubble conclusion. To me, an index is a passive rules-based machine that a basic computer program can track or execute as a strategy at a minimal cost. It is not at all like the nation of Japan or even the Nikkei Index in isolation.
And yes one can quibble about the definition of active and passive as the S&P 500 actually has a committee of people selecting which stocks to include in it. But it’s worth noting that most employees in 401ks dollar cost averaging with their weekly paychecks into an indexed target date fund are not buying or just buying the S&P 500 in a bubble. They’re also buying foreign stocks and bonds in indexed form as well as small caps via a total market index. Moreover, because they’re buying at regular intervals every paycheck they are not merely buying a bubble, but buying both when the market rises and falls, at its peaks and troughs. So the end result smooths out their cost basis.
Sure there is a momentum tilt to market cap weighted indexes, but most active managers are afraid of deviating too much from the index and underperforming it dramatically when the market is rising. So they go down with the ship when the market falls. And their still much too high fees continue to kill their performance year after year. A handful of managers truly think differently, have low fees and the skills to be right when they think differently.

@johnN: "Tsp Ira all in 2045 spy Iwm and vo..."
Unclear.
TSP isn't an IRA and it doesn't offer one. If TSP, did you signup for new brokerage window? Heard bad things about it - too expensive, etc. There is indeed TDF L2045; a unique aspect is that fixed-income portion included SV TSP G Fund and TSP TDFs are much more conservative that typical TDFs.

What I find interesting regarding index funds is what Fleckenstein refers to the endless money train into said index funds (my paraphrasing, not his words) from retirement investors into 401Ks etc., just like what folks were thinking in Japan years ago...this is going to go on and on, until one day it doesn't and whammo. Drives stocks/indexes up no matter what the true fundamentals are (note what AAPL did last quarter, earnings I think were flat or so and market cap goes up what $5-6Billion? What's up with that?
I think that his one of the reason's some/many invest with funds that are NOT index funds...thinking is that index fund results are based on group psychology to an extent and "it works until it doesn't"...
Hmm.

Our current list keep adding buy list
BRK.b
Tsla
Vang2040 2050
Iwm
Yinn fxi
Vong
Vo
Vang international etf and eem
Vht
Qqq vgt
Tlt
Boeing
Cost
Little XLE slv gld
Tsp Ira all in 2045 spy Iwm and vo international small caps
Also few hundreds per month into btcusd ethusd dodecoins (100 200)
Prob more heavily load toward fxi China sp500 etf imho ccp new world leader in 3 5 yrs bypass everyone else
Thankyou so much for all the wonderful commentaries and thoughtful suggestions

This thread to me is really fascinating and partly understandable:
https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1647197271304335360

Hold a target date fund for 20, 30, 40 years? Sounds good in theory.
What legal or contractual agreement exists with the sponsor to operate that fund for an indefinite time period or as @Baseball_Fan says to adhere to the same allocations, operating restrictions, fee structures? I’ve had at least two firms I invested through (Strong & Oppenheimer) go completely out of existence in the past 25 years. A third one, Templeton has been essentially merged out of existence since I opened a workplace plan there in the early 70s. Or are these simply extreme aberrations due to my antiquity?

”From 12/31/2021 through 10/12/22, PRWCX lost 16.91%. Since then it has gained 13.54%.”
At the depth of the decline, $100 invested on 12/31/21 would have fallen to just over $83 - perhaps enough to spook some little old “grannies” (but no one here) into selling. Those who continued to hang on would have $94.34 remaining today for every $100 invested at the end of 2021.
Those with the foresight to pour additional money into the fund on 10/12/22 would have reaped significant reward. However, at that point there were more compelling opportunities in “growthier” funds that had fallen farther as well as in individual securities - were one willing to gamble a bit.

Last year, the media declared Allocation 60-40 dead, and this year they have risen from the dead, or risen from the ashes. WSJ, Barron's, M*, almost everybody. Media headlines are for the the current news with some hype.
While basic 60-40 (SP500-like + 10-yr Treasuries) had its ups and downs, there were only 5 years in history when both stocks and bonds were down, 1931 (both DODBX and VWELX existed then), 1941, 1969, 2018, 2022 (last year), and in absolute terms, 2022 was simply the worst year for 60-40 since 1937. It is almost natural that dramatic rebounds follow dramatic collapses (for funds at least).
https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1609209009994612739

Although only ~7% now, I've doubled my holdings since the end of 2022,

@MikeM, am I correct to assume that percentage is your portfolio? I have owned risky asset but generally in well under 5%.

In the last 6 months, this topic has been discussed at length. https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/comment/156944/#Comment_156944
Bought a CD several months ago from Barclays Bank - 12 months at 5.4% with NO $ minimum.

Think you can do better at your brokerages where there offer many choices that pay higher rates (>5% 12 months) and no $ limit. Right now, 3 and 6 months T bills that pay a tad over 5% and the upper limit is $5M.

Are such items the very same animal as a bank or CU cert. of Dep?