yes
i dont mind the extra US exposure

Assuming equal weightage, I would recommend against it.

CSPX and QQQ overlaps too much. They overlap each other approximately 36% by market weight, and roughly 15% SPY is in QQQ and 77% of QQQ is also in SPY

CSPX then also overlaps VWRA by roughly 48% by market weight, ~5% with SPY, and 1% with QQQ.

You would be so insanely over-weighting some specific stocks unless its completely intentional and you know exactly what stock you are over weighting in, every month.

Perhaps you can share with us your investment philosophy for this portfolio to let us better understand it? Investment horizon, etc.

If you didn't own individual stock and make a portfolio of 1-30 stock, that means you wanted to diversify.

If you wanted to bet on the US, that the top 100 company will continue to grow, then QQQ is good enough, why SPY(CSPX)?

If you wanted to bet on the US, the top 500 company will continue to grow, you are more diversified, and their business being international in nature gives you pseudo-international exposure, then why QQQ?

If you are worried about US's growth, their ridiculous P/E ratio, and they may or may not receive a massive 20%+ pullback in near future, winners rotate to international stock for the next decade, and want to invest in 60US:40International ratio, and the next time it rotate again, it doesn't matter to you, because you hold all of them - then VWRA is perfect, why overweight US again with QQQ/SPY?

...et cetera.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 9 2022, 11:52 PM

thank you for spending the time
was just bouncing ideas around
my initial intention was to get exposed to US stocks particularly in tech (qqq) and value stocks (cspx) then add a little bit of global flavour via (VWRA)

but after reading your analysis, it seems it would make more sense to me to just buy VWRA alone

buy VUAA if you want lower cost for S&P 500. ETF managed by Vanguard and it is growing fast. Irish Domiciled and dividend reinvesting also.

This post has been edited by Davidtcf: Feb 10 2022, 09:42 AM

My thoughts exactly. Even though VWRA markets itself as "All World", it's pretty much an American-centric ETF...

Not saying that American companies don't perform but if you want a truly globally diversified portfolio, you might need to add some European and China-focused funds.

VWRA top holdings and geographic exposure:-
https://www.vanguardinvestments.dk/portal/i...quity/?overview

It's about time for Malaysian boglehead chapter. I have been transferring to ibkr via sunway money->cimb sg -> ibkr.
Recently some1 suggested wise multicurrency acct-> ibkr.
Which is better?

They are very close in value with Sunway winning sometime on working hours, and going through CIMB SG leaves a better paper trail for audit purposes.

If you do Wise via ACH directly to USD however you pay less FX conversion fee when depositing smaller amount (converting SGD to USD has a flat 2USD fee for most amounts on IBKR)

It'll be up to your deposit size and preferences mostly.

VWRA do hold emerging markets and European markets... And they are holding it by weight/market cap as it should be. What you are referring to is overweighting certain country such as China, which given investors sentiment that US is overvalued or due for a correction in the near future, is not a bad idea to underweight US.

But lack of a good way to buy ex-US UCITS fund means that you are either stuck with having to buy multiple other ETF, or buying some VXUS and losing out a little on dividends to withholding tax.

Personally I'm happy with just having VWRA and skip the rebalance nightmare and cost. The performance will even out overtime given my horizon.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 11 2022, 12:57 PM

New Boglehead reporting in. I started investing in 2020 right BEFORE COVID happened, so similar stories to a lot of others who went in ATH before things came crashing down. Earliest investments were mostly in dividend stocks (Maybank, TNB, some random telcos...) then beginning of 2021 I dabbled in StashAway and FSMOne.

I realized investing is stressful because I needed to keep track of market movements to know when to "buy the dip" (time the market). Following the SA forum I noticed some members (shoutout Hoshiyuu) are going DIY, and at first I thought that's bollocks because there's no way that's less stressful than letting others manage it for you, RIGHT?

Then I read Bogle's "Little Book of Common Sense Investing" and it completely blew my mind. Here's an apt summary: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comment...of_commonsense/

I realized unit trust vendors (FSMOne, bank agents, etc.) are profiting off my hard-earned money. You may think 1% is very low "if you're earning money anyway", well if you read that book you'll see the end net return is decreased by 30-40% over the years by just that 1% difference.

So now I'm a "guai kia" (good boy) and buying and holding 100% VWRA (shoutout Hoshiyuu and honsiong for the idea and explanations) on LSE to track the FTSE All-World Index. Data suggests the next decade's returns to trail behind the past 10-20 years, but I think that's OK for me since I'm holding for the long term.

One thing I'm curious is how much fellow Bogleheads are allocating on bonds? I'm almost 30 y/o so still have quite a ways to go. There are some people on r/Bogleheads suggesting "age minus 25 in bonds" rather than Bogle's "age in bonds" due to equities' tendencies to outperform bonds over the long term, and to only lean into bonds when you're closer to 40+

For now I'm not holding any bond ETFs, but I have the Amanahraya Syariah Trust Fund on FSMOne (Islamic sukuk fund) that I'm debating if I should keep or sell eventually in favor of something like VAGU

Hoshiyuu do you DCA monthly for VWRA using market order or ad hoc purchase using limit order?

Well said on the matters of fees!

My original two fund portfolio is exactly VWRA+VAGU at a 90:10 ratio, which by the time I retire I should able to survive out of selling bonds alone for a good while, and anywhere between 10% to 40% bond have fair and varying optimal portfolio success rate, but I opted to not buy any bonds for now and likely stay 100% equities forever.

My reasons are:
1. I don't see a reason to buy bonds when I have at least 20 year on my horizon, I need accumulate as hard as I can right now to get compounding working.

2. I seek to keep a healthy amount of emergency fund in MMFs or other low risk assets, and minimizes my monthly commitment that I can survive at least 1-2 year of market downturn and unemployment without liquidating any equities.

3. Bonds in general isn't in a great place right now, it's likely not going to give much if any return at all for foreseeable future and it's really just a weak store of value option in my opinion

4. We have access to EPF/SSPN as amazing pseudo-bond options. This is the most important thing to us Malaysian Bogleheads IMO compared to US recommendations. We have forced saving at a decent rate in EPF, and SSPN Prime gives good steady return with very good liquidity and overall ease of access, with both platform easily providing 4%+ safe returns*. EPF alone is a great analogue to function as 20-50%++ bonds to your DIY equities portfolio.

*While the cynic in me has little confidence in the government, both of this vehicles affect enough people that I'm sure even the government will think twice before messing with them. If EPF or SSPN goes kaput, we have bigger issues.

I would love to get comments, thoughts and counter point to reasons #4.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 11 2022, 08:37 PM

Market order is generally considered a bad practice even if it really doesn't matter at my level buying power. Just to build good habit, I place a limit order at the lowest ask or something and let it fill instantly.

I buy monthly but I currently do not deposit and convert currency monthly.

If you choose to DCA monthly, please take care of not letting transaction cost eat into your investment too much. I aim to keep it under 1% but 0.6% if the best I can do now until I increase my income further or changing my deposit interval to once per 2 months.

Hi,

What you are missing out is the capital gain you get from bond funds (in particular Treasuries). And this capital gains happen when the economy starts to slow down or is in a recession, which is the time equities do badly. This gain is on top of the interest you receive.

Eg compare the performance of SPx and TLT between early 2019 to end March 2020. In 2019, global economy started to slow down and then got into a recession (by covid).

My main concern with EPF is that it's denominated in MYR ultimately, be it deposit/withdrawal. I honestly don't have much faith in MYR over the next 20+ years.

Another factor for me personally is that I'm a freelancer and thus self-employed. I only contribute the yearly 4000 to get tax relief since there's no matching employer scheme

So with all that said, maybe a "safe" bond-like facility may actually be FD? Bond yields are like what 1.x - 3% at the most? If our FD can go back up to the pre-2020 3 or 4%, it'll beat inflation and give a small return as a value preservation tool, right?

I'm not sure if the performance listed at fund pages include both coupons and capital gains, but if it does give me around 3% or above overall there's an argument to be made to not put money into SSPN but bonds instead, given that MYR is circling the drain and threatening a dive 24/7 with such weak confidence in Malaysia market and it's government...

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 11 2022, 10:13 PM

Definitely, I have zero confidence in MYR too, I don't keep any MYR aside from basic spending and emergency funds - and even then I'm seriously considering making my emergency fund SGD instead of MYR.

In my case my EPF contribution is mandatory, so whether I like it or not I'll already have this stable asset that I can eat from when I retire. For your case I definitely won't recommend putting more than the tax relief threshold. You should seek bonds then if you want to have some ballast asset in your portfolio, tuning the amount to your risk appetite and investment horizon.

I strongly dislike FD because of the lock in and given FD absolute terrible rate right now that has no end, a high yield saving account, MMFs (specifically Versa or SA simple that has next to no fee and sale charges) sounds like a better idea.

Or just buy some VAGU, it's cheap right now 😆

Total return is just the combination of capital gains n interest.

But during period I mentioned, (Jan 2019-April 2020), TLT which is a US Bond ETF provided about 35% capital gains. The interest /dividends is probably about 3% only.

During the same period , SPx was down about -10%. It would be a great time to rebalance, n reallocate into SPx.

P/S I'm not a Boglehead as Im more active going in and out.

Bonds are for old age people to buy.. they grow slow and steady.
I prefer dividend investing if I’m an old 60-70 yr old dude one day.. pick a bunch of safe dividend stocks in SG and MY and keep DCA into them will do. Or if lazy just put some money into FD or EPF.

When younger better to go for growth stocks or ETFs. We still have time on our side. VWRA is a good choice. I personally prefer CSPX/VUAA more (S&P 500). Some would invest in SWRD and EIMI as this would cover both developed and developing markets.

Speaking of dividends, for those considering dividend investing, these video provide good advice when considering such a path, as opposed to simply having a simple 2/3-fund portfolio using broad based index with less of a focus on dividends.

Ben Felix - The Irrelevance of Dividends

The Plain Bagel - Why Investors Love Dividends (And Why They Can Be Dangerous)

A more local flavor for those that prefer it.
Kelvin Learns Investing - The Problem With Dividends | Dividends Don't Matter


This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 11 2022, 10:53 PM