Recent content by lazyday

I've had good luck with them. Really all my experiences with Amazon have been good. Can be decent savings if there's a good coupon or two at fatwallet.com Though Amazon seems to make it harder now to use two coupons on one order.

Lots of smart people are having a hard time, believing that every investment is priced high today. I believe stocks are still priced to strongly outperform bonds over the next 50 years, so stay invested in them, but wouldn't be surprised by a 30% drop starting tommorrow. 6% on cash/CDs sounds...

Yes, but maybe not much. U.S. stock prices and their foreign sales are probably correlated, but not perfectly. It's possible for foreign stock markets to do much better than U.S. largecaps, in spite of good foreign sales. Not sure it's a fair example, but some people talk about this from point...

Swensen included a sample AA in his last book, which doesn't tilt to small or value, but still is sliced into different asset classes. U.S. stock, Fn developed stock, emerging markets, tips, nominal treasuries, and real estate. I'd have a real hard time buying real estate at today's prices, but...

Thanks for posting the Siegel argument. Interesting. Would like to see counter-argument to that. He did indicate that oil prices might be the first thing not to. :) I think it's reasonable to expect a return to the mean, but I'm not counting on it happening in the next 7 years. (IIRC...

:smitten: They make perhaps the best chocolate candies I've ever had. (Truffles, caramels, creams, etc) Not sure if still the same, but I used to stop at the counter at Bergdorf Goodman by Central Park, and get a few dollars worth. Which, at over $50 a pound, means a few very small candies. :)

Callebaut. Or, cheap 70% Lindt at Walmart. Hershey and some others have milkfat added. I avoid, since there's good chocolates without milkfat.

You're welcome, Audrey and Nords. Too tell the truth, I thought I may have picked that link up from you, Nords!

You probably already have this handy table from Fido: http://personal.fidelity.com/planning/tax/pdf/fidmatrix.pdf There may have been a change in AMT after the last update. I've seen a summary of info on standard deductions, exemptions, and tax brackets on Fairmark, for current year. But...

Maybe I'm reading this chart wrong, but looks to me like on a simplistic PPP basis, U.S.$ is about as overvalued to the Euro as it is to the Yen, at least as of January: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/48/18/18598721.pdf I don't have lots of good sources of PPP data... if you (Ha) or anyone has...

Another Free Fido Food report (not mine) for those who are interested in such things: http://66.223.18.76/wwwboard/messages/175012.html

or, less reliable but more fancy, http://stockcharts.com/

The past week cost my portfolio 4.1%, but it hasn't changed AA enough for me to do anything yet. If EM falls some more, I might add to it, probably taking from either commodity futures or TIPS, both of which are up since last purchase. Tips went up. Megacap U.S. BRLIX didn't cushion much...

My reading of the chart shows the Yen to be stronger than currencies in USA, Canada, and Australia. And about the same or stronger than the Euro. The data may not be optimized for comparing valuations of currency though. I don't think the same basket of goods is used in each country. Here's...

No guesses from me... If I'm reading this chart right, based on PPP, the Yen was overvalued by 23% compared to the US$, in December. The Yen has fallen since December, but not by anywhere near 23%: Not making any predictions here, just an observation that some might find surprising.