Asset Allocation

The traditional view of portfolio management is that three asset classes, stocks, bonds and cash, are sufficient to achieve diversification. This view is, quite simply, wrong because over the past 10 years gold, silver and platinum have singularly outperformed virtually all major widely accepted investment indexes. Precious metals should be considered an independent asset class and an allocation to precious metals, as the most uncorrelated asset group, is essential for proper portfolio diversification.

In the early part of the 1980s, there were many seminal gold price studies that showed 5% to 10% of an investment portfolio could have been optimally allocated to gold from 1968 to 1980 to maximize a risk return allocation based on performance. Even today many high profile and alternative financial experts...say a 10% gold allocation makes sense but a closer look at the facts show that they may be a little understated in percentage terms. Let’s take a closer look as to why this may be the case.

Should you buy & hold your gold or silver or switch back and forth depending on the gold/silver ratio? This article examines 3 scenarios and identifies certain rules that should be followed to make the most of the ups and downs of the gold/silver ratio to substantially increase your holdings over time.

80% of my investable income is in cash, precious metals and a small number of stocks. That might seem crazy, but the Pareto Principle, Zipf's Law and the bell curve have convinced me that it's a waste of time and money to get any more diversified. [Let me explain why that is the case.] Words: 396

Investing in blue-chip stocks that offer capital protection and steady dividends in volatile times looks like a smart option. In view of these factors, we have narrowed our search to the following stocks based on a good Zacks Rank and other relevant metrics.

The markets have recovered since the stock market correction in December 2018, and it seems nobody is worried anymore, but the numbers are not looking good, so caution is advised if you decide to jump into the stock market.

It’s hard to say where markets will head in 2019 – but before we get into the nitty-gritty of a new year, it’s worth taking one final look back at 2018 to see how it impacted investors.

Most people still think that you need exposure all over the board to get good diversification but that assumption is a fallacy. If you don't choose to believe us, that is your loss - literally!

By definition, rare events should seldom occur and applying that understanding to financial markets assumes that all market events follow a normal distribution or, in layman's terms, a bell-shaped curve. More specifically, the statistics say that 99.7% of all daily movements should fall within three standard deviations of the mean, no more. Well, guess what? New research suggests that they clearly don't follow such a pattern - that "unlikely" doesn't mean "never". [Let me expand on that.] Words: 1079; Charts: 1

It would seem we could be entering a rocky market stretch given China's collapsing stock market, the Greek and Puerto Rican debt crises, etc. Today's infographic compares how 14 different asset classes have performed during the last five crises.