Hi,
I am moving about 60K CHF out of CIC 3a to a new VIAC account.
As normally I wouldn’t dare to lump sum invest that amount on a broker, I am thinking about parking the money on an account with the Global Account Plus strategy (5st-95cash) and slowly changing the allocation strategy every 3 months until I reach to my desired goal (20-80/40-60/60-40/80-20).
Does this approach make sense to the veterans of this forum ?
IMO nothing wrong with it. It would indeed smooth the volatility which can help with peace of mind.
Was it a savings account or invested in funds?
If it‘s the former, I would do it just like you said.
If it‘s the latter, I would start at the stocks/bonds allocation that you had before (e.g. 60/40)
How much is the rest of your portfolio/assets?
If your target is 80/20, starting at 5/95 and “slowly ramping up” basically means: I want 80/20, but I’m choosing to stay underinvested for a while. To pick up on @Luk_nuts’ question: if you were already at 80/20 and moved to 5/95 for a year, you’d call that de-risking.
It’s also mild market timing: you’re implicitly betting that delaying equity exposure will help because markets might drop soon. Sometimes it will, often it won’t. Vanguard has a good 5-minute read. The takeaway is that lump sum beats cost averaging about two-thirds of the time, largely because cash has a lower expected return.
The only strong argument for the ramp is behavioural. Loss aversion and regret (Prospect Theory) can make an early drawdown tempt you into changing the plan. If you’re confident you won’t tinker after a drop, go straight to your target allocation. If not, a short, rules-based ramp can be a reasonable compromise.
A savings account.
cash (savings+cheking+kassenobligation): 123K
stocks(VT+3a): 154K
3a other (comm+REIT+cash): 65K
2a: 222K
So 65k is about 11.5% of your NW and you already have some experience with stock investments.
I would say, not worth too much brain space then. Either way you can’t predict the future so either just dump it into the stock market now (simplest) or go 50% invest now 50% DCA, or DCA all of it, whatever makes you happier.
Just worth noting that you have a pretty cash and bond-like heavy portfolio (60% in cash/bonds/etc). (Though maybe that’s just your liquid investments and you’re in real estate, in which case a big cash position makes sense too.)
If it would be invested at CIC instead of cash: would you sell everything and DCA back into the market at VIAC?
Because it’s the same decision as your current approach.
I’m not sure it is. I’d use a similar approach (but with cash) to avoid things like loss aversion / endowment effect when deciding an allocation.
But once you decide to change your allocation, how you reach that state still matters (if they were in equity on cic, they obviously wouldn’t DCA because they’re already at the target allocation).
Honestly there’s nothing wrong with DCA’ing in that case. Yes, on average you might lose a bit vs lump sum, but an individual person will likely do that decision only once or twice in their life so they don’t benefit from the law of big numbers. To me it’s fair to also look at the variance and try to minimize the bad outcomes as well.
The money is already in cash at CIC, so this type of question is exactly the same as why he started this thread, no? Therefore, doubt that this questin helps.
@fal There is no 100% answer. Just do whatever makes you feel more secure (sleep better).
Don‘t you guys realize it‘s just mental accounting? It‘s exactly the right question to ask.
Person A has 100k invested in VT and inherits 100k in cash. Decides to DCA those 100k over 12 months into VT.
Person B has 100k invested in VT and inherits 100k in additional VT shares. Decides to sell those 100k of shares and DCA back into VT over the next 12 months.
The outcome will be identical for both person A and B. It should exactly be the same thougt process for OP here. So it should absolutely NOT matter if those 3a assets at CIC are invested or in cash. The decision should be the same in both cases.
If he decides to DCA, he should also decide to sell everything at CIC and DCA back into the market if it were to be already invested. If you don‘t come to the same decision in both scenarios, you‘re doing mental accounting and it‘s a bad investment habit.
I do. That’s why I say, just do whatever makes you feel more secure (sleep better).
I don’t understand why you think this has anything to do with VIAC or CIC. I’m sure he would ask the same question here in the forum if he were investing the money at CIC 3a instead of VIAC. And then we wouldn’t say, “What would you do if you invested the money with XYZ?” 
But I have to admit: I probably just don’t understand it…
I‘m not talking about risk, just about psychology.
I disagree 
with that reasoning you would never DCA (which I think is wrong, there can be reasons to prefer DCA).
It’s fair to do a step-wise allocation towards a target. If somehow you were already at the target (you were magically gifted something that already matches your allocation) then nothing to do, otherwise you can do it in N steps to reach the target in X months.
Which is exactly why you‘re still not getting it lol.
Ok, then we’ll fundamentally disagree 
(I feel like a lot of investors only look at average and never at the variance, and often are not even fairly rewarded for the extra risk they’re taking, investing is also about assessing the risks and your risk appetite)
I think the point you‘re not getting is that I‘m not saying DCA is bad. I‘m not talking about risk and which investment decision is better. I‘m only talking about psychology and the decision making itself. It‘s a fallacy and there are many, the most known is sunken cost fallacy.
P.s. If you don‘t feel comfortable investing 60k now, you shouldn‘t invest at all. Or change your asset allocation so it matches your risk profile. Because in 12 months your risk profile should be exactly the same.
OP has cash on a 3a and has made a decision to invest more in the stock market. They change their provider for the sake of something more fee efficient, but that’s a detail.
So it comes to a basic lump sum vs. dca debate. It’s not new money, it’s not inherited, it’s not invested, it’s a decision to invest available cash and change the allocation. Then ask for a method.
As always, lump sum wins statistically, but as @nabalzbhf stats are not verified on a single event, nor buy peace of mind.
DCAing at VIAC adjusting the strategy is a good method if DCA is the way.
Why does the current state of those assets matter for his decision? Why should it matter if it‘s 60k in cash or in funds at CIC? It would still be 60k. The only relevant question is what to do with those 60k now.