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Yes this is a really ridiculous policy. Whats even worse is that if you use a corporate account, every cash movement from one account to another will require a signed paper document to be scanned and emailed to them. Not sure why they allow you to email it though, I would expect them to require...

http://www.businessinsider.com/bridgewaters-ray-dalio-on-donald-trump-administration-2016-12

Rosenberg is bearish http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-18/bearish-david-rosenberg-re-emeges-fade-rally-trump-will-engineer-return-deflation

This price setter characteristic adds another potential gain from owning gold. For non-US its mostly a currency effect channeled through an internationally traded commodity (the same effect you can get by owning USD bonds or other things), for a price setter like the US, it becomes more of a...

So one of the discoveries is that is appears that non-US investors can reach their "efficient frontier" a lot more easily if on their non-domestic exposure, they focus on US assets instead of gold. Not to say there is no room for gold, there is. I tested whether a 5% allocation to gold made...

A way to solve the issue of duration risk is to own US Bills+ US stocks and stay out of US bonds. I run the numbers and for almost the same annual return as gold, a 60/40 bill/us stock portfolio produces a 19% SD portfolio (as compared to 33% in gold). 61% winning years versus 53% with gold. Avg...

US bonds are USD denominated and woulndt provide much of a hedge to a US investor

I guess gold is more valuable to US investors. You guys cant run into US bonds if the USD is falling off a cliff globally, in that case, you need gold for protection. But for the rest of the world, gold's value is more limited. Gold is good for an EM guy when he cant get the money out of the...

One thing that my tests are showing, that is on the dissapointing side, is gold. Not that it doesnt help to decrease risk, it does. But its value is nothing compared to UST-bills/bonds and US stocks. Its obvious to me now but the tests have shown that as an emerging market hedge, the problem...

Right now in Brazil its interesting because people can take on duration risk. A "Treasury Direct" program started in 2005 and people can buy inflation linked bonds for as far as 2050. This creates an interesting dynamic because its an asset that historically was not avaliable, most people could...

Of course the people sitting on Treasury bills are also taking another risk, which is the risk of hyperinflation in the US. Not a high risk but it would wipe them out good. Point is, have a balanced portfolio with some concious and calculated risk taking. Risk is unavoidable

Thats pretty much what happened in the US since the financial crisis. People that made a living off fixed income with short-durations got clobbered. Every year their nominal and real returns came down. But the folks that had some duration (say 8-10 years, the widows with some risk appetite) at...

I guess the widow who refuses to take on any equity risk (and specially if she stays in very low duration instruments), is taking ANOTHER risk. Which could be even greater. That is the "financial repression risk". Carmen Reinhardt shows that even developed economies like to engage in financial...

The case where this is not true is when the investor takes on very low duration risk (by using savings accounts or very short-maturity bonds) and there is no spike in inflation (or when there is but then the central bank responds by hiking rates VERY aggressively). In that scenario...

In Brazil this played out because of the inflation risk that savings accounts take. In the US, people have had access to bond funds with duration for a long-time (whereas in the Brazil, this is more of a new thing). There it can also be true that having a little bit in equities is better than...

Removing US stocks (to negate any value of FX fluctuations) Max DD still -38%

Here are the corrected tables, there was an error in the 2nd one. Didnt change much though

How can owning some stocks protect more against the downside of having all your money with very low duration fixed income? In the US, this might not happen but in Brazil's case, because of the high inflation and hyperinflation years, sometimes you got hurt badly by staying in fixed income. When...

Here is a preliminary finding from my study. I tested one idea that I had read about in the past and knew it was probably true but wanted to see the data. The idea was "even if you are 70 year old widow that wants 100% safety, owning a little bit of stocks will have less risk than being 100% in...

But the same way you cant look at just the nominal USD return to see if it was a good bet in the hyperinflation (you got to consider the domestic inflation and other asset alternatives). You cant look a just the return of VRX, you got to consider the kind of risk the shorts are taking. And the...