Depends on what you are prepping for:

Financial crisis: USD, Treasuries

Stagflation: Gold, Commodities

Recession/Deflation : USD, Treasuries

It's not enough to be have a fully diversified equities portfolio to protect vs a massive drawdown, you need diversification across asset classes.

I'm not a Boglehead n I actively manage my portfolio allocation across these asset classes.

The witholding tax on dividends for US ETF is a problem. It applies to even bond and money market ETFs.

Personally I use Singapore government bond ETF (abfsg) as an alternative to US Treasuries. There are also Money Market ETFs in SGX and HK.

You can also look at UUP ETF as another alternative for USD exposure.

This is not a Money Market ETF, but rather a Futures Contracts based ETF. So it has no distribution. Fees are on a high side, but it performance is good.

P/S I will be a bit cautious to start piling into USD now, considering it's at such high levels.

This post has been edited by Cubalagi: May 12 2022, 08:22 AM

Futures contract can be a bit risky if u DIY them yourself.

For ETF, it's the ETF manager doing it. The more risky ones are those leveraged 2x or 3x ones. If it's unleveraged, then should be fine. But fees are usually higher than simple physical ETFs.

Sorry for the heresy talk. 😆

Please continue DCA VWRA discussion ..

Good to know u have embraced ETFs! The total market thing is a respectable approach. Historically, pretty hard to beat.

If u r 100% equities, you have to learn to live with the volatility tho.

I'm still using both single stocks n ETFs (and some unit trust), jump around between asset classes, sectors etc..very UnBoglehead.

Current allocation* is:
35% Treasuries
20% Currencies
10% Gold
35% Equities

* Approximate

If this is all your portfolio, then you are too concentrated.

I have Malaysian single stock names as part of my equities portion. I limit it to not more than 30% of my portfolio, at max. Currently at about 15% as I'm defensive as a whole (not just Malaysia).

P/S Not a true Bogglehead.

This is how I sort my portfolio:

I have a big category called Financial Assets. Under that there is:

1. Everyday banking: this is the savings account where celery comes in and go out.

2. Emergency Fund. I prefer to dump mine into a Mortgage Flexi Account.

3. EPF: this is the mandatory and can't be adjusted, but I'm in the category of eligible to withdraw. If a really bad bear market comes, I will withdraw and put in 4 (below). But otherwise, I don't touch this.

4. Investment portfolio: This is where the rest is. Stocks, ETF, Bonds, MMF, Funds, Asx, PRS, cash balance in the brokerage account.

It is No 4 that I actively manage and adjust allocation. Meaning if I say I'm 100% equities, it would mean all of 4 is in equities (practically impossible).

Oh..and I also don't have FD and any investment linked insurance.

This post has been edited by Cubalagi: Jun 3 2022, 03:38 PM

Points 1 and 2 are quite small less than 5%. I don't even consider them as investments.

Point 3 I have no control over the investment. Point 4, I try to beat Point 3 performance by a few % points annualized.

My defenders are in Point 4. I'm a market timer of sorts..some time go offence, and sometime on defence and can make big moves in the portfolio. The main objective of defence is to preserve gains. Many investors made big gains in last 2 years but were not able to preserve those gains.

For Bursa shares, it's RM10 per counter regardless of amount.

I have also transferred foreign shares before among local brokers, but I can't recall the fees how much.

I do.

I hold the Tradeplus Gold and Tradeplus New China in my portfolio. Tradeplus is managed by Affinhwang asset management.

I used to own the abfmy bond and got good returns in 2019, but already exited long time

Im not really a Boglehead as I do buy individual securities in addition to indexes.

i also dont have a fixed asset allocation like Bogleheads do.Currently, portfolio positioned quite conservatively. This is the approximate asset allocation of my portfolio:

50% Bonds
25% Equities
10% Gold
15% Cash

Abt 10 years investment horixon

Roughly 90% are govt treasuries or govt guaranteed. Another 10% are high yield (5% of portfolio). Mostly in bond ETF that freefall last year.

As mentioned, I dont have fixed allocation and can make big switches using the ETF portion.

Its not a permanent or long term allocation.

2021-22 have been horrible years for the bond market. In fact, for USA, it was the worst bond rout in history. Usually, after such a bad period in market, there will be a rebound. And it does appear that interest rate has peaked or is very close to peak.

Basically, lock up current levels of high interest rate and sell n make capital gains when interest rate drops.

Win: Interest rate drop, esp if bad recession.
Lose: interest rate go much higher and stays there.

Wow..Bogleheads now also use options?

l always thought tht Boglehead is just simple investing strategy with a few broadbased index fund/etf, and just hodl with some rebalancing.

Interestingly there are covered call ETFs. XYLD and QYLD are the ones I found. XYLD selling calls over the S&P500 and QYLD selling calls over QQQ. The yields are quite high right now, 12% and 13%.

I personally wont buy these as being ETF the WHT will kill the returns.

However its interesting to see the price history of these ETF.. It seemed that this strategy makes it hard to recover during market crashes in terms of the value.

Done.

One of the question stumped me..I have passive, active funds and individual stocks in my portfolio. The question didnt allow me to choose all three.

Need to have an allocation to riskless asset which can be drawn down if necessary. If before retire could be FD, Asx. After retired can be epf.

Depends on age, risk profile etc. and ones asset allocation.

U need cash since you dont want to be selling your risk assets in a recession to fund your expenses. Ideally u want to be buying risk assets at that time.

If 55 and beyond, EPF is there and as good as cash.