Yes, but:

1. You lose 30% witholding tax on dividend immediately so you start with a foot behind the starting line.

2. https://www.optimizedportfolio.com/covered-calls/

Contrary to our resident expert Ramjade which is doing this if I recall correctly, I recommend to just buy and hold and increase your income elsewhere.







This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 7 2023, 03:23 PM

IMO, selling a covered call is still making a bet that the stock won't go up (or not by much). And first and foremost a Boglehead purist likely also believe that no one can predict the stock market.

The core philosophy/spirit is always setup a simply 2/3 fund portfolio, keep it simple, make regular deposits, never look at it and check back in 30 years.

Unfortunately next to no investors are willing to do that. Most people believe they can do something to chase alpha. Some are able to, but most fail to do so.

Most people prefer to believe they are the former. And therein lies the root cause of most portfolio failures.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 7 2023, 05:57 PM

It's also worth considering that even with CSPX, you are trading diversification away - you are choosing to exclusively bet on US stock outperformance for years to come just to make a few extra bucks along the way.

Yeah, I understand that viewpoint too, and is what Jack Bogle (IIRC) and J.L. Collins have said too. I myself have a slight preference to be closer to 60-40 according to cap myself, but it's totally not an absolute must.

(Hell, I'd argue that if people just applied the "invest in the right instrument and never think about it again" mentality, and did nothing but buy Maybank shares with high saving rates every month, for 30 years, they would still easily outperform 90% of the retail investors)

Since you are here, do you mind chipping in your two cents on the idea that selling covered calls on long term buy-and-hold stock is not free lunch, and that the investor would be limiting its upside while risking big downsides for only marginal extra income?
I've seen this argument thrown around a lot within the Bogleheads community, and I am really curious what are your thoughts on it, as you seem to be a strong proponent of this method for as long as I remember you started offering valuable free and genuine advice on this subforum.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 7 2023, 07:22 PM

Thank you for your valuable insight as always, that's the missing puzzle of this method I was looking for.

Thanks! Appreciate that you expand your financial news sharing to this thread too.


If finance majors from ivy league couldn't do it, what makes the average retail investor think they can beat the market consistently?

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 11 2023, 09:37 AM

The crazy activity at any UT, stocks and alternative investing threads sure is a good display of that sentiment.

Not at all! That is some great info, I have not been keeping up with the news at all.

I think with this TER change, IMID is now the closest Ireland-domiciled counterpart to VT for non-US investors, and I am very interested.
At the moment I am using Avantis' factor tilted small caps to fill in what VWRA doesn't cover and benefit a little from not holding lots of junk small caps. But honestly I really like the idea of having one and only one ticker in my broker.

I am just worried that there may be something I am missing that's obvious, like poor sampling method, hidden cost, bad weighting method.... because this sounds almost too good to be true, this is the fund I wanted since I started my investing journey, and the only downside I can see is really it doesn't have Vanguard slapped on it for some bogleism bias. I'm not worried about AUM and trading volumes because it doesn't directly translate into it's liquidity anyway.

Would like to know what does everyone else think.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 11 2023, 06:16 PM

Copy pasting this message here since Malaysian Bogleheads would mostly hold Irish-domicled ETFs listed on LSE - anyone that trade stocks listed on LSE can chime in?

I just noticed that my trading fee for VWRA (LSE listed, denominated in USD) have reduced from 1.92 USD to 0.35 USD. Can anyone else also confirm this?

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Jul 1 2023, 05:35 PM

You can do it, but I personally don't recommend to do so. But no reason to sell your CSPX immediately if you already have them.

CSPX is a subset of VWRA so by buying both at the same time, you are overweighting the stock in CSPX given you potentially uncompensated concerntration risk, but realistically speaking, CSPX is still far more diversified that the worse case scenario of stock picking as it is, so it's not the worse thing to ever happen.

If I were you, I would buy nothing but VWRA going forward, and slowly sell off CSPX when I am rebalancing the stock part of my portfolio when it overweights. But don't make portfolio decision based on a single stranger's advice on the internet. Really consider what you are trying to achieve and see if it's suitable for you.

Crossposting some info I've posted at IBKR thread:


I've set up recurring investment for VWRA, a LSE listed ETF denominated in USD.



Contrary to the information provided by IBKR:

1. If you don't have enough USD, it will convert from your other currency balances. This conversion is free.
2. It trades at the end of the trading day.
3. It charges minimal commission where possible. (0.35 USD instead of the usual 1.70+ USD) The ongoing theory is that it's an internal trade within IBKR where possible and it saves cost.

The cheapest route to invest at any amount now for me is:

1. Remit SGD to SG Bank. (MoneyMatch -> CIMB SG, <2 hour during working hours)
2. Deposit from SG Bank to IBKR SG (CIMB SG -> IBKR, <2 hour before funds are made tradable)
3. Set up recurring investment, it's possible to set to buy for exactly 1 time to mimic normal buying.
4. SGD automatically converted to USD without 2USD commission on trade with IBKR's great spot rate.
5. Trade is done at cheapest possible broker commissions.

Not only this makes weekly DCA viable, it also basically eliminates my minimum investment amount per trade. (Used to be RM3000+ for better rates on SunwayMoney and keeping TX cost at around 0.5%)
Take care if you buy stocks with high spreads this way however. For proper Bogleheads, this is nothing but a great boon so far.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Aug 23 2023, 12:00 AM

Haha, to me, the thread being dead silent is a great sign. There really isn't much to discuss other than slightly cheaper FX route from time to time.

Pick a ticker, deposit at fixed interval, try to increase income or live a fruitful life, no need to check or think about it that often.

bogleheads ma~ just chilling...

my investment horizon easily 20 more years away, cash out now more likely to lose money in the long run anyway ^^