Hi everyone,
For the portfolio that are not 100% stock… enabling bonds instead of cash… good or bad idea?
What are the pros and cons? Any opinion?
Bond is invested in this etf: https://products.swisscanto.com/products/product/CH1117196035
Ok, and they use another one with CS: Fund detail | Credit Suisse Asset Management
It seems to me that raising interest rate is still a significant risk for bond etf…
Thanks
No, you’ve linked to an actively managed fund. VIAC offers this Swisscanto index fund: https://products.swisscanto.com/products/product/CH1117196035
The CS fund is very similar. They track the same index but the Swisscanto fund makes exclusions based on ESG criteria while the CS fund doesn’t. I wouldn’t expect a big performance difference.
The above index fund has a duration of 4.2, which means that a yield increase of 1 percentage point will approximately result in a 4.2% reduction in market value. Note that the yield change at the relevant duration is relevant, which may not be the same as the change in SNB’s prime rate.
The fund consists solely of corporate bonds, which may make it slightly more correlated with stocks compared to gov. bonds.
If that’s too volatile for you, you could consider the “Swisscanto CH Bonds AAA-BBB 1-5” fund (in a custom strategy), which has a lower duration of 2.7 and a higher average rating as it also includes gov. bonds and mortgage-backed bonds.
A couple of weeks ago I would have definitely recommended the 1-5 fund instead of VIAC cash with 0.6% interest. However, the bond yields have come down over the last week, so it’s less clear now.
I’ll likely still invest in the 1-5 fund at VIAC but will do it more incrementally (one account at a time). Will check the situation again after the expected SNB rate hike next Thursday (and potential CS news).
I have switched all my 3rd pillar to Swisscanto today.
It was really seem less and will bring me peace of mind.
I have few custom strategies and save 0,09% of fee on the Swisscanto Emerging market funds by doing so.
The cost to switch from CSIF to Swisscanto EM is 0.93% (combination of spreads), though. With current fees, the switch is worth it if you keep the EM fund for at least 5 years.
This 0,93% cost to switch is a bit annoying.
By the way, isn’t it strange that VIAC don’t make it more clear that switching between provider has such a cost?
That’s probably the “upper bound” though, or?
They do internal shifts between accounts before having to “go out” and buy/sell.
Does that process also incur such costs?
Where do you get the number from?
Yes, that’s the upper bound. If some VIAC customers are buying shares of the same fund you’re selling, the fee should be lower. However, I suspect a lot more people will be selling CSIF fund shares than buying on the next VIAC trading day. I.e., I don’t expect VIAC’s optimization to help much in this particular case. It may make sense to wait with switching EM funds until the future of CSIF is clear, in which case VIAC’s fee optimization may be more beneficial.
The fund fact sheets list subscription and redemption fees. The CSIF EM redemption fee is 0.76% (no idea why that’s so high) and the Swisscanto EM subscription fee is 0.17%. The Swisscanto EM redemption fee is much lower than CSIF’s, though (0.23%), which is why it ‘only’ takes about 5 years to even out (assuming no VIAC fee optimization).
Good highlight.
How did you get the detail of this trading fees ?
I will monitor my accounts values the working day precious to the trade if I can estimate it.
It is totally worth it.
Still hodling CS funds or moving to swisscanto? 
I’ll stay with the current funds unless I’m forced to change them. I don’t want to pay transaction fees for no reason.
Moving
I would have probably changed in the future without all of this mess. The fact that CS was in a bad situation just accelerated my making decision; also for peace of my mind (I had enough of this shitty management in CS).
I’m also considering taking the ESG funds from Swisscanto that are more interesting than the ones with CS 
What will happen to the CSIF funds that make up most VIAC strategies?
My guess: nothing in short-term, then eventually simply rebranded as UBS or merged with existing UBS ones?
I’ve just changed my strategy to the same one, but with Swisscanto funds instead of Credit Suisse ones (I didn’t know this was an option!).
Good thing you didn’t have “some cash on the side” ! 
Aha yes, now I am quite happy I didn’t have any ammo… Well that’s what happens when you do bets with “fun” money and a good lesson at the same time.
I asked VIAC about the move and there answer is slightly different. In short:
A switch from CS to swisscanto (100% stock) would costs 0.16% due to the spread.
That’s possible. My numbers were referring only to the EM fund. Other funds have much lower spreads. The weighted average might well be 0.16% for Global 100 but I haven’t checked.
But at some point interests will (hopefully) stop raising and start going down. I guess that would be the time to buy bods, as they’ll be giving a high yield and their price will also go up?
Viac converted all my allocations to Swisscanto.
My portfolio is already up and could not notice the conversion costs.
I didn’t find any document that detail those brokerage fees.
Yes, exactly. I think people have become so used to bonds being uninteresting investments that they have trouble adapting to the new situation… Personally, I recently bought bonds (IGLA, outside of P3a account) for the first time in about 10 years because I think we are nearer to the top of this cycle of interest rate hikes than we are the beginning.
That said, this round of hikes started far too late…
Everything is pooled and I assume there are nearly always net money inflows to VIAC, so costs should be minimal or negligible unless everyone dumps the CS funds for Swisscanto more-or-less at once (not impossible)