Marc DeMesel runs his blog over in Europe and has built a European version of the Permanent Portfolio using Eurozone stocks, German Bonds, Cash and Gold. He too presents a mid-year report from the European perspective showing a 8.7% YTD return and goes over how the portfolio performed historically. Keep in mind that the Euro this year has taken a thrashing which is why the gold price appreciation in Euros is higher than that in the US.

His site is in Dutch and this is the English translation link:

Crisis? Not with a Permanent Portfolio

Marc talks about an important issue of buying things you may not think are worth owning and selling assets that are your favorites when they go up too much in value:

A crystal ball is not required, but an iron discipline in order to buy certain assets that you do not believe in and occasionally by balancing assets to sell what you believe in.

Discipline is right. It takes discipline to sell off something that has gone up so much in price and you think can only go higher to buy today’s current dog that the news media says will only go lower. Likewise, there can also be an asset you’ll be holding in the portfolio that others will ridicule as foolish. It takes a lot of discipline to ignore this noise but the reward will be an ever growing pot of money.

Related posts:

  1. European Permanent Portfolio Blogs
  2. A Fall 2009 Update – You did rebalance, right?
  3. A Permanent Portfolio?
  4. Permanent Portfolio Results 2008 – A Disaster Averted
  5. Porn and the Permanent Portfolio