After my piece on gold silver ratio was published, one of my acquaintances read it and asked me this question: is gold (or commodities in general) really necessary for The Bedokian Portfolio? As usual, my response is: it depends. Elaborating on my answer, I shall use the Portfolio Visualizer (seems obvious that this place is becoming my go-to site) to carry out a simple back test, with three versions of the US Bedokian Portfolio and benchmarked to the Vanguard 500 Index Investor, representing the US equity market. Bedokian Portfolio 1 (Portfolio 1): The balanced Bedokian Portfolio; 35% equities, 35% REITs, 20% bonds, 5% commodities (gold) and 5% cash. Bedokian Portfolio 2 (Portfolio 2): We shift the 5% component from gold to equities, hence 40% equities, 35% REITs, 20% bonds and 5% cash. Bedokian Portfolio 3 (Portfolio 3): We shift the 5% component from gold to REITs, hence 35% equities, 40%...