Id look at EMQQ as holds both EM & frontier stocks and performance is insane
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Have a look at HAN-GINs Cloud SKYY lower PEs and global less mid caps
Thank you, appreciate you sharing. Taking a look now
Just my opinion. but I don’t think now’s the right time to buy into this ETF. Lot’s of uncertainty around China.
It’s also not the most diversified ETF with ~60% of allocation in the just the top 10 holdings and ~60% in China. It’s shot up at a rapid rate and I think it can fall just as fast. (at which point there may be an opportunity to enter)
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In terms of other information, I don’t really have a particular source. Mostly it’s just googling around a topic and reading the wikipeida / investopedia articles to understand core concepts.
Outside of passive investing I do read some investing forums to get an idea of retail sentiment. If I see loads of discussion around a stock / sector (e.g. this year Tesla, Virgin Galactic etc…) I will generally try and avoid making moves there as they likely are behaving irrationally.
For stock picking I try to avoid making decisions on broadly available information (as I believe this should already be priced). For that reason I focus on (non-investing) professional forums, consumer forums and academic papers in areas I’m familiar with. This is basically your standard “buy the rumour, sell the news stuff” approach.
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Can you guys over at HAN magically replicate the ARKK fund please so the noise about this ETF (and lack of European availability) goes away please? Pretty please? I’ll sponsor/white-label it myself just to stop the “please add ARKK to your universe” repetition. 
Or, if 1st year launch and maintenance costs are circa. £350k (How to Create an ETF | HANetf) , then we’ll fund it between Freetraders. 350 founder investors… £1000 each. Easy. 100 founders, £3500. Either way. Crowdfunding ETFs and getting them trading on new age brokerage platforms. A business model waiting to happen. Anyone interested email me at hello@finki.io Build you’re own asset manager. Just a thought. Crowd funded. Crowd managed. Asset allocation devised by sheer weight of founders “votes” for stocks.
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I currently have Country ETFs like FTSE100 Japan, Pacific etc but actually never thought about why and whether they will outperform the world market.
Therefore I’m thinking of simplifying to the below portfolio where the Core is Long term hold. Satellites are used to try beat the market over a 1-5Y period and reviewed more regularly.
Appreciate any thoughts on the overall makeup (the satellite picks are my opinion of where future gains are)
| Name | Ticker | Description | Role | Allocation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanguard FTSE AW | VWRL | World | Core | 40.0% |
| JPM EMERGING MARKETS IT | JMG | Emerging | Core | 20.0% |
| iShares Global Aggregate Bond | AGBP | Bond | Core | 5.0% |
| ROYAL MINT PHYSICAL GOLD ETC | RMAP | Gold | Core | 5.0% |
| iS FallenAngels HY CorpBd HgdGBP | WIGG | Bond | Satellite | 5.0% |
| INV EQQQ Nasdaq100 | EQQQ | Technology | Satellite | 10.0% |
| iSh Hlthcr Innov | DRDR | Healthcare | Satellite | 2.5% |
| iS S&P 500 Healthcare Sector | IHCU | Healthcare | Satellite | 2.5% |
| WTCloudComputing | KLWD | Technology | Satellite | 2.5% |
| L&G Cyber Security | ISPY | Technology | Satellite | 2.5% |
~5% reserved for more short term stock picks.(TSLA, SQ etc)
~5% reserved for ETFs that are not on FT yet like biotech ETFs
Hi, I won’t comment on your satellite picks as those are your choices for beating the market (and as mentioned above I don’t feel like I can weight on that). Here’s my feedback on your some of your core picks.
As above don’t take this as criticism, just my thoughts for your consideration.
JPM EMERGING MARKETS IT
This is an actively managed trust, you are paying 1% fees for people to manage this for you, if you believe they will beat the market by more than 1% in the long term then that’s good. If not you could consider passive (index tracking) Emerging Markets ETFs which should have costs around the 0.2% mark.
You actually have quite a lot of allocation to emerging markets (they only make up ~15% of global equities) which is fine if you expect them to outperform but worth being aware of.
Vanguard FTSE AW
This also includes emerging markets, which you also have a large allocation to separately. If you wanted you could consider a developed world fund instead (which would exclude EM)
ROYAL MINT PHYSICAL GOLD ETC
I’ve avoided gold as it is a non-productive asset so doesn’t really align with my long term goals, however I agree that some allocation does make sense depending on your time horizon and risk appetite so it’s purely a preference thing
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Thanks for your thoughts. Really appreciate your comments.
I’ve consciously chosen the JPM Fund for my EM allocation as I personally feel more confident that an actively managed fund will outperform a passive EM fund by 1% annually over the long term.
I think you’ve got a great point and I think VEVE would suite my Core better (and it’s cheaper)
Have you done some research into AGBP vs VAGP? I am still deciding which to go for
I did a bit, but to be honest I don’t have a good reason to pick one over the other. If anyone else has any views on this I’d be keen to know as well.
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AGBP vs VAGP
Hedge your bets and invest in both (50/50)?
Precious Metal ETFs dominant. But for how long
Top-performing fund, investment trust and ETF data: August 2020 (source:Morningstar via ii)
Likely not very, historically gold has returned very poorly compared to stocks or bonds (which is unsurprising as it is a non-productive asset). I’m currently a long way from withdrawal so I’m focused on growth, however once I imagine I will take some exposure to gold to hedge as I get closer to retirement so I do think it can play an important part of a portfolio.
Worth bearing in mind a lot of those funds are actively managed - which I don’t really go in for.
My opinion is that Gold is likely to fall in the next 2 months as people rotate into recovery stocks and then reverse and retest highs as USD inevitably weakens.
I see gold as a counterbalance to uncertainty, I.e. buy gold at the height of a bull market and sell during a bear market/ crisis when everyone seeks it as a safe haven. Other than that as Cameron said it’s a non producing asset.
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Cameron, one month later, have you implemented your proposed ETF portfolio yet, or are you still working on your plan?
What the basis for this?
Major pensions funds are beginning to rotate into TIPS and gold. CBS are still buying gold over USD. Even if retail investors sell all of their holdings, they are not the main market for gold.
I got my timelines wrong but you can see gold starting to rise again as USD weakened last week. Before the latest increase it hovering at 1920-1940
Here’s the passive part of my portfolio now.
| Ticker | Name | Tilt | TER | Weghting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| £VWRL | FTSE ALl World | None | 0.22% | 15.61% |
| £VVAL | Global Value Factor | Value | 0.22% | 16.78% |
| £WLDS | MSCI World Small Cap | Small Cap | 0.35% | 12.45% |
| £CSP1 | S&P 500 | US | 0.07% | 20.54% |
| £VEUR | FTSE Dev Europe | Europe | 0.10% | 12.78% |
| £VFEM | Emerging Markets | Emerging | 0.22% | 7.18% |
| £ISF | FTSE 100 | UK | 0.07% | 12.17% |
| £IIND | MSCI India | Emerging | 0.65% | 2.48% |
This gives a weighted TER of 0.18% and you can see the breakdown by country / sector here
I sold my global bonds position, I changed my mind and decided to avoid a significant fixed income position at the time. I’m still holding a bit of cash and haven’t used all of my ISA allowance this year so if we see another downturn I can average down quite a bit anyway.
Current Considerations
A few things I’m thinking of doing:
-
Increase Emerging Markets, Decrease UK weighting
-
Swap S&P 500 for a North American total cap index (this shouldn’t be massively different). I just think the S&P is a bit arbitrary and I have no reason to be excluding Canada
-
Sell my FTSE All World and move the allocation into the other ETFs (one less to worry about + slightly cheaper)
-
Increasing my tilt towards Value (maybe 20% value and 10% small cap)
Active vs Passive
My portfolio (ex cash) is currently 60% Passive 40% individual stocks, an increase from the OP. I’d like this to be closer to 70/30 in the long term, but I don’t have any plans to re-balance immediately.
This is partly due to some individual stocks outperforming (AMD, JD, GOOGL) and new investments for stocks recently added to the platform (ASML). I’ll likely be selling off a lot of my AMD position next year which will help sort this out.
Total Portfolio breakdown
| Geography | MSCI World | Portfolio |
|---|---|---|
| US | 57.60% | 63.25% |
| Europe | 14.00% | 14.61% |
| UK | 4.00% | 8.07% |
| Emerging | 14.00% | 11.38% |
| Japan | 7.60% | 1.97% |
| Other | 2.80% | 0.73% |
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Thanks for the update, Cameron. It all looks sound and you’ve made some interesting changes.
- Bonds. For someone who’s 10+ years from retirement, it’s probably OK to have a riskier allocation as there’s plenty of time to do something about it should things deteriorate early on.
- EM+, UK-. Seems to suit your (apparent) risk appetite better, and reduces the home bias. From my reading around, some think home bias is better for when in drawdown to reduce currency risk.
- VWRL. Given that you have UK, EM, US, and EUR trackers, it would get rid of the duplication. If it were me, not only would I swap the VUSA for VNRT (if I’ve interpreted your S&P/North America remarks correctly), but switch VEUR for VERX to avoid UK duplication. Keeps it cleaner.
Being pedantic, VVAL isn’t passive 