Passive Investors - ETF Portfolio Discussion

Good video with great information and data! I am also overweight EM (initially too aggressive when I started investing) and it’s definitely been a rocky time. The currency dynamic could be an interesting factor, will the CNY reach reserve currency status?

Which ones would you go with considering fees, share price etc?

I recommend using JustETF to browse, you can filter by exchange, geography, distribution type, index, strategy - basically whatever you want and then sort by TER.

You could look at Amundi Prime Global (PRIW) I think that’s the only global one cheaper then Vanguard on Freetrade, I’m not familiar with it though.

For S&P there’s Invesco SPXP at 5 bp vs Vanguard 7bp

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Cheers, I’ll look into those. It’s not even about the fee, apparently one of our member firms is auditing it or something, so it’s restricted for me.

Ok iShares are probably a good option as well assuming Blackrock is ok for you, they are priced similarly to Vanguard.

There was some discussion earlier about sector/thematic ETFs - something which I was generally unfavourable towards but despite my best judgement did buy some Clean Energy to my disappointment.

Anyway Ben Felix just made a good video summarising the literature on why these are generally a bad idea in case anyone is interested in the argument against.

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As someone new to investing a few years ago I would definitely say I fell for the media noise around the themes. I even chased returns to my shame but it was a lesson I needed to learn and I thank myself that it was a relatively small allocation.
I think there are genuine themes out there which you can make investment decisions based on but using an ETF or Fund over the long term probably won’t work out well for many of the reasons outlined in the video.

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Have you sold the Clean Energy ETF and re-invested in one of your geographic ETFs (forming a composite global ETF)? Or holding on to it on the basis that one day it might come good again?

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Yeah I’ve kept it and added a small amount when Ukraine kicked off. It’s about 3% allocation so it’s not much and it’s up 5% which is bad in relative terms but not disastrous.

I added some small positions in various themed ETFs but have sold all apart from two, which I’ll keep long term to see how they do (AGES and IH2O). Still only small positions (about 1% of my portfolio).

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Hi folks I’m just looking for the best way to get some global exposure in the form of an ETF. Previously I’ve used VWRL but I’m a bit put off by the £9.95 trading fee applied by Vanguard. Ideally also the ETF would be accumulating.

As such best option I can find is iShares MSCI ACWI which has no such fee. Has anyone any other ideas or does this seem like a sound option?

Just one other thing to add. I was a bit concerned about this fund being in USD as when I come to sell there could be some hefty exchange fees. But are there any equivalents in GDP that cover the world market?

Freetrade and Vanguard do not charge trading fees. Are you using another platform?

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I think Vanguard does charge a £7.50 commission for instant ETF trades but you can avoid this by using its twice-a-day fee-free service.

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There are no exchange fees - at least none that I’d consider high enough to be relevant or that you would see in any way.

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This is the fee I’m thinking of.

That’s just a cost that the ETF provider has to publish, it’s got nothing to do with your trades. 9.55 for an investment of 5000 over 5 years is roughly 2£ or 0.04% per year and you will never see it deducted anyway.

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Okay I was thinking that was every trade which would add up when dollar cost averaging. Super helpful.

This’ll be my first trade so learning the ropes!

So given that I can’t see a reason not to go for VWRP as my base index fund - maybe 80-90% of my equities portfolio. Any thoughts?

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Welcome then! :pray:
You can find many helpful discussions by using the search here in the forum, e.g.

Generally, I don’t think anyone would say it’s wrong to put 90 or even 100% into a world etf, but it’s more of a personal risk appetite question.

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