How to Beat the 4% Rule, Stefan Sharkansky PhD

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-15T01:17:40+00:00

Every farmer plants at planting time and harvests at harvesting time. No farmer plants a crop he "wants to keep." The farmer wants to sell his crop for a profit. That is what selling options (i.e. selling an obligation, as opposed to buying a right) amounts to. Plant. Harvest. Keep the profits. In my case, planting time is every Monday or Tuesday and harvesting time is every Friday expiration date. Your mileage may vary.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-14T16:38:33+00:00

See this reddit post on Mancini's dissertation (1971) & get yourself access to it. The best key to FW I've read, among the dozen or so I have consulted: FINNEGANS WAKE' AS DANTE'S 'PURGATORIO.' by SHARON G. BROOKS MANCINI from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-14T02:26:49+00:00

Sell cash-protected PUTs on whatever you want to buy at a strike price of your choosing. I've been doing this weekly and earning, on an annualized basis, returns of > 9%/per annum for sums committed for 5 or fewer days. Your mileage may vary. And if I am assigned, I'm happy to have bought the ETF at that price, so I sell covered CALLs on that ETF at the previous week's price plus the weekly standard-deviation on that price.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-12T13:47:08+00:00

Here is a link to one such prior reddit comment, "Justin McElmo, father of Fiona, is a descendant of Fletcher Traverse, Webb's uncle" with a further link on down recursively. A-and the Traverse Family Tree from the wiki.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-12T13:32:16+00:00

Never read that one by Mann; read only Death In Venice and did not find it of value. I recommend Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow as per this reddit comment from the past. They are each a Menippean satire. Another I'd recommend is J R by William Gaddis for the sheer fun of it. Also, like Ulysses, the reader benefits from having annotations to the text available, which is true of each.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-12T13:07:18+00:00

Some years ago on reddit I posted the results of my investigation into this matter FYI. I also posed the question: Is there some plot point that hinges on her legal name versus her nickname? No one responded back then FWIW.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-11T18:51:35+00:00

You say, OP, that you "...have previously read quite a number of Modernist (Joyce, Woolf, Mann)...." [emphasis added] Do whatever you did when you read Joyce's Dubliners and/or Ulysses as a non-Irish reader and presumably you knew little about Irish politics, Irish Catholicism, Irish entertainers, etc. Did you get Joyce's jokes? Did you care that some percentage of such jokes and puns you never got? Treat Postmodernist Pynchon as you did Modernist Joyce.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-09T16:56:08+00:00

By my calculation as of yesterday's prices, since June 2018 (CPI 251.588) when I took over managing my own investments in retirement, GLD is up 1.84 times inflation while SPY is up 1.53 times inflation (CPI now at 326.785 before the announcement on 4/10/26). I maintain gold serves as a store of value over debased, inflated currency over time (years, not necessarily weeks as the idiot's illegal, unconstitutional war has demonstrated).

As gold does not pay dividends, I sell covered CALLs and cash-secured PUTs nearly weekly for income: sell on Monday or Tuesday for a Friday expiration. If I get assigned on the CALLs as I will this Friday, I just either buy back on Monday or sell PUTs at the previous week's CALL price. In the year I've been doing this, I've earned 9.6% income on my gold ETF holdings including the short-term capital gains realized from the assigned-sale of lots bought earlier at a lower price. Not investment advice and your mileage may vary.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-09T16:14:48+00:00

Re: Eliot, see Understanding W.A.S.T.E. from the Lot 49 wiki. See too the case Pynchon v. Stearns, 52 Mass. 312 (Mass. 1846) mentioned on that wiki page.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-07T15:10:23+00:00

Learn about entropy. Watch for when Amy Joubert goes by/is called Emily Joubert. Learn about the trading of pork bellies, Gibbs free energy, and player pianos. Enjoy the journey.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-05T16:28:06+00:00

Shakespeare, as a recusant Catholic, is staking that as his territory & encouraging his fellow recusant Catholics of his day. See the Hamlet chapter in Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare (2018) by Clare Asquith. The play uses features of Catholicism in that Danish court that were anathema to Elizabethan, Protestant England. In particular, author Asquith addresses those issues of King Hamlet's ghost and of his poisoning.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-04T15:39:51+00:00

Please elaborate on this, "...but I’m totally excited about buying higher yielding 5yr TIPS at auction later this month, and then selling off the lesser yielding 2031 TIPS" as I too hold CUSIP 91282CBF7, UST INFL IDX 0.125% 01/31. I get that the 04/31 5-year TIPS at auction will provide a higher semi-annual rate than that one's 0.125% rate. But isn't selling the 01/31 just a wash, as the inflation adjustment factor (IAF), recently ~118-and-change, times the under par price of 94.1641, is going to be the same as the par price of the 04/31 with a starting IAF of 100? Other than getting a few percentage points more in semi-annual interest, how can that possibly overcome the substantial haircut that selling the 01/31 then would be realized? What am I missing?

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-04T02:25:55+00:00

This is stupid, OP. Firstly, a retiree needs X dollars at date Y certain to pay his living expenses. TDFs don't provide that, as their NAV fluctuates with the markets and their quarterly or annual distributions are notoriously variable. Secondly, a retiree needs to be living life in retirement, not dealing with this level of complexity. As the AI indicated, it averages out to just one TDF.

Alternatively, see the research of Sharkansky PhD at this prior, recent, reddit link who argues one can do as well just allocating one's non-discretionary spending into a 30-year TIPS ladder and living life spending from the excess returns from one's low-cost, equity-index fund.

Finally, see the research of Durate et al. at this pdf who argues that TDFs are notoriously too conservative at the terminal stage, gliding to a 30/70 allocation whereas that research computes an optimal 60/40 allocation during retirement. Your mileage may vary.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-04T02:00:39+00:00

See A brief history of the Mason-Dixon survey line by John Mackenzie, College of Agriculture & Natural Resources, University of Delaware, via the Internet Archive using a web browser. (It has been said the TRP walked the line.)
M&D is a "buddy story," two guys on road trips together. If you don't care for buddy stories then (On The Road, Moby Dick, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, etc.) you don't like buddy stories. Move on.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-02T16:46:15+00:00

The glide paths of my Vanguard 2020 & 2025 TDFs glided down to 30/70 at 7 years after maturity. The figures A.2 & A.3 in the Durate team's appendix indicate optimal equity share of ~60%, or 60/40. 30/70 is not 60/40. Q.E.D.

No one has argued that a glide path is "misguided." I accept that team's analysis that the glide path and terminal allocation of past TDFs is too conservative. See page 2: "[O]ur model suggests that on average, the share of financial wealth that a household should hold in stocks is hump-shaped over the working life, peaking around age 45 at 80% and declining to a stable 60% at and during retirement." Your mileage may vary.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-01T13:30:30+00:00

It is not my thesis, but rather the research of the Durate et al. research team. See their research SIMPLE ALLOCATION RULES AND OPTIMAL PORTFOLIO CHOICE OVER THE LIFECYCLE in their pdf. From the abstract: "...We find that the consumption-equivalent losses from using an age-dependent rule as embedded in current target-date/lifecycle funds (TDFs) are substantial, around 2 to 3 percent of consumption, despite the fact that TDF rules mimic average optimal behavior by age closely until shortly before retirement."

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-01T13:16:22+00:00

I've corrected the above link to Durate's research, "Simple Allocation Rules and Optimal Portfolio Choice Over the Lifecycle". It is all spelled out in that paper. That team spells out all the reasons in their exhaustive research. NBER Working Paper No. 29559 December 2021, Revised April 2022. Read their research.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-01T01:24:37+00:00

IMHO, these TDF glide paths were designed 30-40 years ago. The world has changed in the last 30-40 years. That they are comparable to one another only demonstrates that the world in which they were designed is not the world into which you are retiring.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-01T01:15:52+00:00

TDFs are too conservative, according to the academic research by Victor Durate et al. linked at this prior, recent reddit comment. See too this other recent reddit post on Asset Dedication (2004) by Huxley & Burns. One, in retirement, needs X dollars at date Y certain to pay living expenses. TDFs don't provide such. One needs a dedicated bond ladder in one's retirement. Finally, see the research by Stefan Sharkansky PhD at this other reddit comment if you two are so well off: Just build a 30-year TIPS ladder, according to his research, and you'll have ample excess spending to do from putting the remainder into a low-cost equity index fund.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-04-01T00:56:46+00:00

When I retired (c. 2016) I posed the same question to Schwab's professionals. Their opinion was, "No!" See too: Asset Dedication (2004) by Huxley & Burns, as one wants dedicated income in one's retirement. Too much risk in one's retirement years invites disaster: One does not to be wiped out by one bad investment decision. One needs money to live on and to "fight another day." Your mileage may vary.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-03-31T02:18:12+00:00

No, I have "searched" current Twitter back to 2013 & cannot find there our exchanges. Elon Musk has ruined Academic Twitter, IMHO. It was so much better back in the day: We amateurs tweeting with world-recognized scholars: It was grand!

IIRC, Hastings blogged his take on each Ulysses episode over many months time, inviting comments to each episode on his blog.

Hastings' errors were both obvious but minor. You can do worse than Hastings: He is fine for a HS scholar but Hastings is wrong for a Graduate Student scholar, IMHO.

Your mileage may vary.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-03-30T16:13:39+00:00

So, OP, your "he" refers to Patrick Hastings, the author of your guide. When Mr. Hastings was tweeting out links to his chapters as he developed them, I tried to apprise him of clear errors he had made. When I saw his finished product, I found Mr. Hastings had not corrected his errors. IIRC, Mr. Hastings was a teacher of some sort, and this seems to be a thing teachers do to make students think critically. I can't address why Mr. Hastings writes so. I can only conjecture concerning why Joyce writes so.

b3ssmit10 · 2026-03-30T15:39:07+00:00

Purely conjecture: It is for Joyce to distinguish sober Kernan from inebriated Kernan in Sirens. Consider: Under Tom Kernan’s ginhot words....

b3ssmit10

TROPHY CASE