For myself I'll just keep it simple - rebase everything back to MYR (retirement currency) and rebalance twice a year

I'd say it's negligible for popular index funds. I've never had problem getting orders filled by bidding +1 cent for IWDA (typically has 3 cents wide spread)

This post has been edited by roarus: Nov 5 2019, 09:33 PM

For Malaysian tax resident, it's quite straight forward as we don't pay dividend and capital gain tax on securities.

For US citizen buying Irish domiciled ETF, I'm pretty sure they'd get walloped by 15% and then again by IRS on capital and dividend. People do a tax reset by liquidating assets before they step foot in American soil when they qualify to become a tax resident there.

For Japanese citizen it depends whether their inland revenue taxes overseas dividend/capital gain. Japan likely has some tax treaty with the US, probably best to buy one from Tokyo Stock Exchange instead if there is.

This post has been edited by roarus: Nov 5 2019, 11:55 PM

Isn't Malaysian securities dividend (other than REITs) taxed at corporate level (single tier dividend) instead?

e.g. Maybank gets taxed 24% by LHDN -> shareholder 0% by LHDN -> whichever tax bracket % you're in by IRS

*Disclaimer not a will/estate expert

From briefly speaking to my friend who does Rockwill, a living trust is something else - it kicks in for conditions where you're alive but not sound of mind/vegetative state.

You're probably thinking something along the lines of how Wozza plans to have 90% S&P500 and 10% US gov bonds allocated once he kicks the bucket? That would still fall under estate

It's a synthetic fund

Pros:
You can get away with US WHT (assuming France doesn't tax you anything)

Cons:
It holds bunch of random stocks and a contract with an institute like Morgan Stanley to swap for S&P 500 returns. If Morgan Stanley blows up you'd be holding and tracking those random stocks.

The current US tax structure makes in impossible for accumulating ETF. DRiP is only available for individual stocks

For accumulative fund (assuming transparency of cost to file paperwork and reinvest):
On ex date: $100-$1 = $99 and on payment date $99.85

For distributing fund (assuming transparency of cost to file paperwork and distribution)
US domiciled on ex date: $100-$1 = $99 and on payment due date investors get $0.70
Irish domiciled on ex date: $100-$1 = $99 and on payment due date investors get $0.85

Not as quite straight forward for things that pay interest - cert of deposits (FD), directly held US treasury are exempt. Certain or all municipal bonds are exempt too. But not US treasury ETFs though

This post has been edited by roarus: Nov 6 2019, 07:31 PM

For example iShares ETF S&P 500 would hold Apple shares. Apple would pay out dividend to iShares. Those dividends are taxable even though it is not distributed to ETF holder.

Berky is different in a way that it is a holding company and not fund manager. It has controlling rights to stocks it invests in and employs tricks like share swaps, parking assets under various sub entities like the insurance companies it owns to be tax 'efficient'. BlackRock iShares won't be able to do employ such creative tricks since the stock shares are ringfenced by trustees

No, expense ratio doesn't have as big of an impact as WHT. It's 0.04% difference vs whole 15% difference here.

Let's say S&P500 yields ~2% anually

Hypothetical Irish and US ETFs:
i. LEPRECHAUN @ 0.07%, 15% WHT
ii. YEEHAW @ 0.03%, 30% WHT

In a hypothetical situation where S&P500 index stay frozen in time for 1 year:
1 Jan: 1,000
31 Dec: 1,000

...and both ETFs are priced at $100

Without expense and dividend:
LEPRECHAUN
1 Jan: $100
31 Dec: $100

YEEHAW
1 Jan: $100
31 Dec: $100

Let's add 2% dividends minus WHT:
LEPRECHAUN
1 Jan: $100
31 Dec: 100 + (0.85*0.02*100) = $101.70

YEEHAW
1 Jan: $100
31 Dec: 100 + (0.70*0.02*100) = $101.40

Now add expense ratio
LEPRECHAUN
1 Jan: $100
31 Dec: 101.70*0.9993 = 101.62881 => $101.63

YEEHAW
1 Jan: $100
31 Dec: 101.40*0.9997 = 101.36958 => $101.37

This post has been edited by roarus: Nov 7 2019, 01:38 PM

That's just emerging market. To start off it's probably cheaper to just buy 1 ticker VWRA which is roughly 90:10 developed:emerging and not worry about rebalancing

It is Irish, the distributing version is VWRD

I may not be 100% accurate, but I like to see it this way for Malaysian tax resident:
US stock pay dividend US ETF, fund manager handles 0% WHT and pays out dividends -> broker withholds 30% tax -> investor
US stock pay dividend Irish ETF, fund manager handles 15% WHT and pays out dividends -> broker withholds 0% -> investor
US stock pay dividend Irish ETF, fund manager handles 15% WHT and reinvests

PIDM equivalent is FDIC
SIPC is protection for securities

One thing to note when you're signing up for TradeStation Global is that it is an introducting broker for Interactive Brokers UK Ltd, not Interactive Brokers LLC (US). Thus, I'll assume only UK FCA's FSCS protection.

You can technically get more than $500k protection. Once your account reaches USD$100,000 you may transfer to Interactive Brokers LLC. You get:
- FDIC for cash (any currency)
- Excess cash protection with sweep account feature (distributes your cash across multiple banks)
- SPIC for securities
- Excess securities protection insured by Lloyd's
- Of course, cheaper trade commissions

Don't get what you meant by high income products? Or you meant high yield?

Sure you pay 1.5% for EUR, but it'll be a bet that USD will not weaken against Euro. If it's that easy and certain everyone would be doing it, right?

I'm more of an investment grade guy, but you can check out iShares High Yield Corp Bonds - https://www.ishares.com/uk/individual/en/pr...-bond-ucits-etf

Don't go all out with 100% high yield for your bond holdings though, maybe 10-15% of your total bond holdings if you want to take some risk and only when your total portfolio is big enough (assuming 15% of total bond and you're on 20/80 ratio for bond/equity - it's just a measly RM15k for a RM500k port)

Hypothetically would you take out a 4.8% MYR loan, convert and dump into a 6% IDR FD? You might end up with more IDR at maturity, but IDR might've weaken at that point you'll still bleed money after converting IDR -> MYR and settling the MYR loan. Oh and don't forget you're serving the MYR loan while waiting for the IDR FD to mature. If IDR rallies instead, lucky you.

Throughout Europe (e.g. Switzerland SWISS SIX/Germany XETRA/London LSE), usually the popular Irish funds are available in EUR, GBP and USD denomination.

Assuming non currency hedge class of a fund, after purchase you'll be owning securities tied to the underlying company stocks - partial ownership of the companies and not hard currency. The price just reflects the converted perceived value of the aggregated stocks in EUR/GBP/USD.

In the scenario:
i. S&P500 index is unchanged
ii. GBP currency rallies hard against the EUR and USD
iii. EUR currency drops against USD and GBP

USD denominated CSPX price unchanged
EUR denominated SXR8 price will increase
GBP denominated CSP1 price will drop

It's anyone's guess

Simply because they're different funds, they just happen to track the same index. They have their own net asset value and they can splice it up and set any initial price at inception they want. Even if they started out at the same price, they will eventually drift apart due to tracking error, expense ratio and dividend payout/reinvestment.

I like it better if they're priced higher, as each cent difference in bid/ask translates to lower % spread difference:
i. $50, bid/ask 49.99/50.01 = 0.04%
ii. $200, bid/ask 199.99/200.01 = 0.01%

And you're holding EUR because you're retiring there/have kids planning to study there/foreseeable trip to EU?

For underlying stocks - small handful are ADR, the rest are Chinese. But the fund is US domiciled, so 30% WHT applies

This post has been edited by roarus: Nov 10 2019, 08:26 PM

Yup that's fine, transfer whichever is more convenient/economical - there's shouldn't be real diff whether you hold EUR/GBP/USD denominated funds as the underlying is the same.

VUSA by Vanguard is traded in GBP. Any one by iShares/SPDR/Vanguard domiciled in Ireland that rocks your boat is fine

You get more GBP from MYR, but the fund will be priced higher due to weaker GBP compared to EUR and USD

For VUSA, no capital gain tax for Malaysian tax resident (with no other tax residency)

USD, for the amount equivalent to GBP1.50 (min) or 0.12% of traded value whichever higher.

Typically GBP1.50 translates to USD1.90 - 1.95

You can lump it into 3-4 months if your investment amount is small