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One can't dismiss having FREE FLOAT by saying 'well, markets have fat tails'. The whole point of investing is to earn premia which gives you a return even though there are fat tails The magin call thing is simply not a concern, we are not talking about a guy with $100K getting $1M in free...

Couldn't disagree more. Its positive expectation to invest that cash EVEN WITH FAT TAILS Say 2 people have $10K in the turkish lira One of them buys 10K worth of gold coins The other buyer buys $10K worth of gold futures. He can invest up to $7K in conservative fixed income which should be...

This argument would be almost the same as saying that float in the insurance industry is bad. Yes you COULD be hit by a lighting but the vast majority of that time you will be fine. I simply won't accept that idea that one can't build a conservative portfolio with positive expectation with that...

There is no disagreement here, a certain portion on real assets will protect against this. Question is whether an index is better than gold or vice-versa. In the 70's recession gold fell by 50% while CRB dropped by 20%(And a certain portion of the CRB is gold), in 2008 it was the opposite The...

Good point about the tax difference though. Its a not a problem in my particular situation which is why I didn't took that into account but most US investors would have that issue

Problem with using Post-Nixon data is that you capture 2 gold bull markets and 1 bear. This makes it look better than it really is. A more fair way perhaps would be from WW2 and on

If the intention is to hold gold for the long-run I see no significant risk at all in having a 5-8 year gov bond portfolio(maybe with some agencies in it) that will be held to maturity. The fluctuations in the P&L due interest rate risk can be safely ignored(except for the agencies) and there is...

Correct me if I'm wrong but if a trader has a lot of margin left but is negative in cash, by doing this transaction he will effectively generate some cash(Thus stop paying margin interest) at the expense of some margin(Which might not be relevant anyway for the trader). Effectively this would be...

They just show ISLAND bid ask(read disclaimer). Charts stink, software in general is poor. Investorshub is not great but its MUCH better than yahoo, and its the same price

I just calculated the implied interest rate in the mini Gold contracts from NYSELIFFE(Essentially the size of the premium you pay for contracts further out). From June 2012 to Dec 2013 the rate came out at 0.09%, this is about ~0.22% for yearly financing of a $55K gold position with about $3K...

I'd raise these points -Gold COULD be a better choice if you are using gold futures. Otherwise I'd just dismiss it as a long-term asset. Why?There is a price for everything, for me to give up several percentage points a year in compounding returns for no reason makes no sense. Apparently you...

Bought more EUR/CHF. position almost at ideal point(4% at 1.15)

There are in deflation, on real terms its actually a better deal with 10y USTs. Of course, if consider likely inflation going forward, things could change. I'm not saying this is some great deal, if I were to buy this it would be a 'buy high sell higher' type of thing, greater fool theory

What is your thesis?

Here is an alternative to TLT. Swiss gov bonds http://media.fundinfo.com/pdf/2012/04/19/3079352.pdf/MR_en_CH_CH0118923918_2012-03-31.pdf http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GSWISS10:IND/chart http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GSWISS15:IND/chart http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GSWISS30:IND/chart

The Yen is up about ~30% since their bubble peak. The risk is that a similar thing could happen with the EUR. They both have central banks that are behind the curve. There are some facts that complicate this though -2% inflation mandate, as much as the ECB is criticized they are succeeding in...

Interesting points. With regards to Gold vs CRB. I'd say its complicated, the "CRB" includes interest income that is earned in the USTs that are used as margin against the futures position. Currently its 0%(The GCC ETF uses bills) but it won't be zero forever. The CRB index return against Gold...

I don't quite understand what is going on with the EUR. I read that it seems that repatriation and foreign buying of bonds has been holding it

I only see a 2% yield if bunds start to tank along with rising CDSs due bailouts leading to big deficits and people getting scared. I don't see many options to play the EU crisis. My EUR short is not working as it should, lots of noise for little or no gain. I still have it but I don't expect...

I'm been thinking about my trade of being long TLT Pros -Most investors hate it, Barrons reported that most managers(IIRC it was 81%) are bearish on it -If the EU implodes(Likely in my view) there should be a flight to safety in German gov bonds, they correlate and compete with USTs in...