If I were to invest in commodities, I'd buy DBC, which is described as follows:
"The investment seeks to track changes, whether positive or negative, in the level of the DBIQ Optimum Yield Diversified Commodity Index Excess Return™. The fund pursues its investment objective by investing in a portfolio of exchange-traded futures on the commodities comprising the index, or the index commodities. The index commodities are Light Sweet Crude Oil (WTI), Heating Oil, RBOB Gasoline, Natural Gas, Brent Crude, Gold, Silver, Aluminum, Zinc, Copper Grade A, Corn, Wheat, Soybeans, and Sugar."
This ETF has been on a big upswing since mid-2017, so a purchase today might not be timely. It certainly would not be buying at the bottom. Maybe the momentum will continue.

Love the concept. But PRPFX has really stagnated since gold topped in 2011.

@PBKCM,
It’s quite easy for me to check the fund’s recent performance, since I converted 100% of my holdings to a Roth on 1/04/16. As of today’s close (1/11/18) the fund has generated a 25% gain in just over 2 years. Coming right after a conversion, I couldn’t be happier. I often noted my trades / activities in the buying and selling threads in the past. If anybody cares to check the January 2016 pages they should come across that conversion date.
You are correct that the fund dropped off a cliff for a while. It was bound to happen. Hot money had poured in for several years as the fund’s (rather modest) gold and silver holdings propelled it higher than most other allocation funds. Folks seemed to feel they’d discovered a low risk way to make a lot of money fast. Of course, there is no such animal. When metals started backsliding (entirely predictable) these fly-by-night investors bailed enmass and moved on. It was at that time, with the price depressed, that I opened a small position in the fund and than averaged in over the next 2-3 years.
-
@LLJB - The Hierarchy of Disagreement
- Friendly (No sweat)
- Mild (Let’s agree to disagree)
- Considerable (You must be off your rocker!)
- Serious (Take a long walk on a short pier why don’t you?)
- Nasty (unprintable)
So with only a “mild disagreement” there’s no cause for concern.
:)
Regards

I believe Schwab's MM is at 1.2 or 1.25 now. I met with my Schwab guy yesterday and we talked about setting up a "safe-bucket" of 4 years needed withdrawal income when I start retirement. We both agreed setting up that bucket (still as an IRA) at an on-line bank like Ally or Synchrone would give slightly higher rates, maybe in the 1.3 range, and also have the CD option available. In any case, that is what I will be doing.

I am not certain of what it all means but if they need 39 pages of fine print to explain it i am betting it's not in my favor. And the two CSR's I spoke to had no explanation. No supervisor was available to give it a try. I am betting that as interest rates rise on cash it won't find its way to Schwab account holders. According to M* Vanguard Prime MM has a seven day yield of 1.41% Try to get that at Schwab.

FYI:
Regards,
Ted
https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/01/11/cashin-people-will-be-pleasantly-surprised-when-we-start-to-see-tax-reform-effects.html?play=1

At Fido if your non-inst DbL shares grow to >$100k (or whatever the TF purchase threshold is), you can reclassify them without problem or charge to the cheaper class. (There's a thread on this somewhere.) The only way to avoid the TF, so far as I know.

Hello,
Here is a thought I feel worth considering about Robo Advisor.
One of the reasons Robo has the number of funds that it has is to keep asset bloat down on the funds that it invest in. Think of all those investors that have money in Robo and what this sum amounts to. Now, if it was configured much like the Federal Governments Thrift Savings Plan (with only five options) and they spread money only among only these five holdings over the current (about) sixteen funds found in Robo then this puts a lot more money into each position (five) over what they have Robo configured (16). I'm thinking as assets grow under Robo so will the number of funds.
Something to think on. Deminished returns becasue of asset bloat.

Gundlach has been making this bullish commodity call for a while, yet he and every Doubleline trustee had $0 invested in the Doubleline Strategic Commodity Fund according to the most recent SEC filing with holdings info as of March 31, 2017. See pages 103-104 here: quote.morningstar.com/fund-filing/SAI/2017/9/22/t.aspx?t=DBCMX&ft=497&d=cea519dc595b9580834096bebcbaa1dd
Only the fund's manager Jeffrey Sherman had any money invested and that was less than $100,000. Meanwhile, I believe Gundlach has been bullish on commodities since early 2016 as he said they hit a "massive double bottom" then:
https://advisorperspectives.com/articles/2017/01/11/gundlach-s-forecast-for-2017

Recently, for my commodity exposure, held in my spiff sleeve, I went with PCLAX (and, it sports a 12% yield). It's Morningstar report is linked below. The fund has a number of share classes. Listed for review are the A shares. Years back I owed it's cousin fund PCRAX and, for me, it was a good performer.
http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/PCLAX/quote.html

Here’s how PRPFX invests:
Gold 20%
Silver 5%
Swiss franc assets 10%
Real estate / natural resource stocks 15%
Aggressive growth stocks 15%
Dollar assets 35%*
Total 100%
* Includes U.S. Treasury Bonds
I’ve had a mild (long running) disagreement with @LLJB who believes one should buy the assets, originally promoted by author Harry Brown, directly rather than paying Michael Cuggino a higher fee to do that for you. I agree - except that I’m not aware of a single poster ever who claimed to be doing that. I’m lazy. The thought of having to buy, transport, store and insure physical bullion, buy and sell stock ETFs, play in the international currency arena and do the regular record keeping (including taxes related to international currency trades) is daunting. Saying the fees are high in no way addresses the issue of diversifying across asset classes, which is what the fund’s about.

@hank, thank you for saying "mild" :), especially since I'm not sure we disagree as much as you think and because I far prefer sharing my opinion and letting everyone else decide what's best for them than attacking the choices people make because I think my opinion would somehow suit them better.
Anyway, I wouldn't suggest buying the assets that PRPFX holds in any way. It would be a pain as you highlighted and you'd always be months behind since they only have to be transparent once each quarter. My suggestion would simply be to allocate 25% each to equities (VTI), long-term Treasury Bonds (TLT), gold (I prefer IAU) and cash. Someone could certainly choose different etfs in order to have some foreign and/or emerging markets equities or to have shorter duration bonds if they have opinions about the direction of interest rates but that's a question of personal preference, confidence, goals and willingness to keep records. Speaking of record keeping, I think for years now brokers are required to report the cost basis of your transactions so the only real need to keep records is if you prefer to verify the accuracy of your 1099, which I do. I would rebalance once each year because the mutual fund must rebalance at least that often and your expense ratio using the etfs I mentioned would be 0.11% compared to the current 0.82% for PRPFX.
Just as a what if I also tried to duplicate the PRPFX allocations and back test the performance. I used IAU for gold, SIVR for silver, EWL for the Swiss stock market, IYR and IGE (7.5% each) for real estate and natural resources, RPG for aggressive growth stocks, TLT at 25% for long term treasuries and VTI at 10% for the remainder of dollar assets. The physical silver etf only became available in Aug 2009, I couldn't find anything else older and I didn't want miners, but my attempt returned 9.83% annually with a max drawdown of 8.79% and a worst calendar year of -4.49% while PRPFX returned 5.76% annually with a max drawdown of 12.52% and a worst year of -6.58%. I only rebalanced once per year which I'm sure made some of the difference and my expense ratio was 0.28%, which also helped. My use of IGE for natural resources probably isn't how they do things either, its sort of like buying physical gold vs. the gold miners, but it was simple.
Hindsight is always 20/20 so I'm certainly not trying to suggest my options are somehow better or that they will be better in the future, but if someone's interested in a risk parity approach then I think its worth considering the options. In fact, if someone wanted life made easy, people have created motifs at Motif Investing where you can follow the Permanent Portfolio or Ray Dalio's All Seasons Portfolio as a basket of stocks, something like a mutual fund without all the compliance requirements I guess. I've never used Motif so I can't say anything good or bad about it, just that I'm aware it exists and how it basically works.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Fidelity has several higher minimum requirement money market funds with yields over 1.40% to as high as 1.52%. I talked to a branch manager who didn’t seem too up to speed on these funds other than to say they aren’t very liquid. I think he meant the money is not readily available if you suddenly want to buy another fund. Apparently the managers of these higher yielding funds don’t want you to continually move in and out and can possibly ban you for future purchases if they feel you are too active. If we get three raises in the Fed funds this year these money market funds will be in the 2.25% range. That could be a positive change in the dynamics of some retirees’ retirement.

Here are Fidelity's prime MMFs:
http://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/category-performance-daily-pricing-yields/GPMM
There are a couple of things I can think of that the branch manager might have meant. One is that these higher yielding MMFs are prime funds, meaning that they're not government only funds. These days, that means that they could impose a redemption fee or freeze your money for a week if the fund gets too close to breaking a buck. (Institutional prime funds also have floating NAVs, but mere mortals are only going to be looking at retail prime funds.)
http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/SEC-releases-new-rules-for-money-market-mutual-5647983.php
The other thing the branch manager may have meant is that these are "position" funds - they can't be used as the settlement/core account. So whenever you want to move money into them, you have to place a buy order. (Fidelity will automatically pull from them if you don't have enough money in your core account for a withdrawal or purchase, so at least that's not painful.)
The highest yielding MMF at Fidelity that seems to be within reach is FZDXX. $100K min in taxable accounts (though you don't need to keep that balance), but just $10K in IRAs. It's currently yielding 1.35%. (There's a more accessible share class of this fund, SPRXX, with a $2.5K min, and a yield of 1.23%.)
I'd look into Vanguard muni MMFs. Right now they're also yielding 1.35% or so. In addition, they're federally tax exempt, and for some states, locally exempt as well. That state exemption is even more valuable now that state income taxes are harder to deduct than before.

@msf. Correct me if I am wrong, but Fidelity has several higher minimum requirement money market funds with yields over 1.40% to as high as 1.52%. I talked to a branch manager who didn’t seem too up to speed on these funds other than to say they aren’t very liquid. I think he meant the money is not readily available if you suddenly want to buy another fund. Apparently the managers of these higher yielding funds don’t want you to continually move in and out and can possibly ban you for future purchases if they feel you are too active. If we get three raises in the Fed funds this year these money market funds will be in the 2.25% range. That could be a positive change in the dynamics of some retirees’ retirement.

A few little lesser known ways I recently discovered to facilitate trading with Fidelity:

• You can set up an automatic investment (for more shares of a TF fund you already own) as late as the night before the purchase; this way you're only out of the market one day when moving money from fund to fund
• You can do a same day exchange across families by calling Fidelity (you can't do this online); this only works if exchanging a specific dollar amount though
• If you ask, you can use FDRXX as your core fund in IRAs; the only options available online are SPAXX or a sweep into FDIC banks. Current yields are: 0.98%, 0.93, 0.13% respectively.

As much as I generally prefer doing everything online, it pays to chat with your broker from time to time. I found out about the two items requiring calls when they came up in conversation, not because I specifically asked.
One other trading oddity: there are a few funds that (depending on the brokerage) settle T+2 (formerly T+3), rather than next day. It turns out that American Funds is one family that takes two days at Fidelity.

Fund flows bother me a lot. They wreck havoc on a lot of funds. Look what happened to MFLDX as “investors” fled. And I’m aware PRPFX has suffered due to the fund’s huge investor exodus after gold cooled. Heck, management discussed the rapid decline in asset base in their fund reports about 3 years back and considered altering the fee structure (though I don’t recall in what manner) as a consequence.
Umm ... I’m a little sensitive on this point being a docile, long term, buy and hold type. And would prefer the “hot money” stay away from the funds I own. PRPFX is not a gold fund. Folks who want a gold fund should buy one.
Here’s how PRPFX invests:
Gold 20%
Silver 5%
Swiss franc assets 10%
Real estate / natural resource stocks 15%
Aggressive growth stocks 15%
Dollar assets 35%*
Total 100%
* Includes U.S. Treasury Bonds
Where I have a (I hope friendly) disagreement with @bee is in posting the fella with the seedy suit and bad hairpiece who’s using scare tactics to promote buying of gold and than somehow trying to link what he’s peddling to the Permanent Portfolio Fund. I see no connection whatsoever between his snake-oil pitch for gold and how PRPFX invests.
I’ve had a mild (long running) disagreement with @LLJB who believes one should buy the assets, originally promoted by author Harry Brown, directly rather than paying Michael Cuggino a higher fee to do that for you. I agree - except that I’m not aware of a single poster ever who claimed to be doing that. I’m lazy. The thought of having to buy, transport, store and insure physical bullion, buy and sell stock ETFs, play in the international currency arena and do the regular record keeping (including taxes related to international currency trades) is daunting. Saying the fees are high in no way addresses the issue of diversifying across asset classes, which is what the fund’s about.
Than there’s David Snowball’s very well documented commentary (roughly a decade ago) analyzing Cuggino’s returns across asset classes and finding the performance lacking. I can’t argue with that. I doubt Cuggino excels as a stock picker. If that’s what you want, invest in a proven equity growth fund. And his dismal results for his short term Treasury fund are easily retreivable. Again, if you want a top income manager, invest with one.
All this said, PRPFX does invest across multiple asset categories. If you like those categories as a diversification tool and don’t want to go through the trouble of investing individually in each asset class, than it’s a decent fund.

One of the things that might have caused some issues was I think they had an enormous inflow of assets, probably during the credit crisis, and then most of those assets left afterwards.
I also know the fund has its own somewhat more sophisticated take on what Harry Browne laid out as his Permanent Portfolio and unfortunately it hasn't helped them. If you compare the performance of Browne's 25% each equities, long term treasuries, gold and cash to PRPFX, Browne has beaten the fund by 100 basis points annually since inception even though cash has effectively been earning nothing for almost 10 years and Browne managed that excess return with a lot less volatility, a much lower max drawdown, a better worst calendar year and, of course, far better risk adjusted returns.
If I could get people to give me $20MM every year for a management fee I'm sure I could come up with a worse version of Ray Dalio's All Season's Portfolio and that's just what they make on the paltry $2.5BN they still have in the fund. Five years ago they had $17BN but they were charging less so they probably only got $119MM that year. I really chose the wrong career!

Hi @hank
I added a few more bond types for the time period.
I will add too, that yes, as you noted; bond yields have continued to trend downward since the market melt; but this has caused the price to increase and offer capital appreciation. So, if management was playing the game to benefit, there should have been gains in this area at various periods.
'Course, I know nothing about their trading habits.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?PRPFX,GLD,EDV,IEF,SHY,LQD&p=6&O=011000

@Catch22

PRPFX apparently has been "bothered" by more than gold pricing. Too many internal holdings to look closer, as I don't get paid very much for this type of work.
@Catch22, The fund holds a significant amount in short term paper and treasury bonds. Both have yielded near nothing for many years. If you throw a lot of 2% yielding paper into a portfolio the net result will be lower than it might be with 100% in some riskier asset. No?
Gold is in my opinion very risky. In my own lifetime it’s varried in price between $35 and $1600. It’s currently around $1300. Doesn’t sound like something I’d throw 100% of my assets into - even if I believed it was going to go higher. Just too d*** risky.

FYI: Investors are slimming down equity stakes bloated by a nearly decade-long bull market, withdrawing $22 billion from U.S. domestic stock funds in a single week, Investment Company Institute (ICI) data showed on Wednesday.
The withdrawal, during the holiday-shortened week ended Jan. 3, marked the largest weekly retreat from the U.S.-based domestic stock funds in nearly four years, according to the trade group.
Regards,
Ted
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-mutualfunds-ici/investors-strip-most-cash-in-four-years-from-u-s-domestic-stock-funds-idUSKBN1EZ2JG

PRPFX apparently has been "bothered" by more than gold pricing. Too many internal holdings to look closer, as I don't get paid very much for this type of work.
Chart looking back to November, 2004 for PRPFX and GLD.
http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?PRPFX,GLD&p=6&O=011000

Love the concept. But PRPFX has really stagnated since gold topped in 2011.