Take the global 100 until you make up your mind, yes. You can change each month if you want.
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I’m not sure I’d recommend that, people need to understand the risk and how stock behaves first.
(otherwise there’s high chance they’ll panic at the first market downturn and cash out at the worst time)
If you know you’ll be able to weather the volatility and are investing it for a long term horizon then go for it though 
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So I looked at the remaining withholding tax of the VIAC portfolio:
- CSIF Pacific ex Japan 8.75%
- CSIF Europe ex CH: 11.4%
- CSIF Japan 15.32%
- CSIF Canada 15%
- CSIF Emerging Markets ~12%
Assuming a 2% Dividend, this results in a withholding tax 0f around 0.068% for next year. Down from 0.163% from this year. VIAC told me that the new fund for US equities will also be 0.02% cheaper than the iShares Core S&P500. Overall, VIAC will be 0.115% cheaper thanks to the tax treaty.
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Great! Let’s then hope they implement this starting 1.1.2010! 
This could actually change the mustachian picture for the best place/broker to hold your US stocks, for some, perhaps, as:
- buying IE domiciled ETFs has of course 15% (== unrecoverable) L1WT for US stocks
- buying US domiciled ETFs has 0% L1WT but with IB carries the infamous inheritance (estate) tax issue - unlike in 3a of course - besides the L2WT “hassle”
- but buying US stocks in 3a would then have 0% L1WT
So if you opt to allocating different geographies with different brokers (in and outside 3a), then holding in particular the US part within 3a starts to become an interesting option. With VIAC the only problem left then is the outrageous FX spreads (up to 0.75%, 2 times, once at buy once at sell) they pass on from CS to us…!
Similarly it would be advantageous to hold Japan stocks in 3a, if the domicile is Switzerland as is the case with VIAC. As according to this list from Mizuho CH funds (should?) have 10% L1WT, similar to US funds which also have 10%, but unlike IE funds which seem to have 15%.
Where did you see this? As per the mentioned Mizuho list CH funds should have only 10%… (but maybe that has changed starting 1.1.2019?)
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I asked VIAC and they forwarded me a list from CS with the L1WT for different countries.
They claim that the FX spread averages to around 0.05% over all their strategies in their FAQ, is there a reason to believe that this is wrong?
Check the actual transaction receipts you get for actual purchases. Mine where usually 0.75%.
I find their wording shockingly misleading, they say:
- this assumes their pooling and netting works in your particular ETF on your particular rebalance day in your particular direction (buy vs sell). Currently people are mostly only buying, so forget this for now!
- what is “annual cost”: compared to overall assets you hold or just the portion you buy - this is unclear. If they mean overall assets this would be borderline false marketing. If it’s just the portion you buy then see point 1.
- what does “over all strategies” mean? it means they might have averaged this number over Global 100, Global 80, 3a Plus, everything. Of course Global 20 has less FX cost, they joking? What good is this “over all strategies” even when all you want is an honest information over how much you pay?
- “over all strategies”: also, mind you that 40% is always CHF based, so anyway you only have 60% FX based stuff, so this “over the strategy” thing is really thowing sand into people’s eyes, sorry
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Alright, fair point.
My reply was due to his age and given he probably won’t touch that stash for the next 40 years (unless other 3 ways of getting money out of 3a), full stock exposure makes most sense today.
Thanks a lot for your answer. I would then have a few questions regarding the bonds positions.
The CS Global High Yield is mainly composed of low quality bonds, but that is obvious since it is high yield. It is composed of corporate bonds and 70% in US. I would then think that if there is a market crash, this ETF would suffer a lot. However, it is only 15% of your allocation so I guess it is fine for you.
For the emerging market one, do you feel safe with this position during a crash? I was thinking about it so I am happy to get your opinion there.
Interest from 3a account is going down from 0.3% to 0.2% as of coming August 1st, I got a notification when I opened the app today.
If you’re invested in Global 100 it won’t affect you much (1/3 of the interest you previously received from 3% of your portfolio is gone, because 97% is invested.)
Do we have a consensus on what the witholding for CSIF Japan is? It should be 10% but CS says its 15%?
Does anyone have this fund in their portfolio and can check the dividend statements?
I concur. I’m certainly not holding that portion of my holdings as portfolio diversification in hopes of being negatively correlated to the stock market (that is "balancing out negative performance in equity), as bonds are often sought out for.
Holding them mainly for the fixed income they hopefully provide, even in more or less sideways (stock) markets.
I certainly don’t expect them to become beacons of stability in my portfolio. The ride might be a wilder one. But it’s all relative.
Governments are pretty likely to pay back their debt. Defaults or haircuts are relatively rare, even for Emerging Markets countries. I certainly prefer EM bonds over any kind of EUR bonds. The EUR just seems fundamentally broken to me as a currency, and its risk underestimated - not appropriately reflected by interest rates and bond yields.
Also, with regards to bonds, I should be rather highly invested in investment-grade bonds as part of my first and second pillar (AHV and Pensionskasse).
Anyone knows if viac plus also reduced return from 0.3 to 0.2%?
15.32% (info from CS)
@glina, @nugget: is there a reason why both of you are holding more than 30% in SMI/SPI? I checked the individual setup for VIAC, and you can reduce the SMI/SPI part to less than 10%. Given the fact that Switzerland only accounts for roughly 3% of MSCI World, this allocation (also for Global100: 37% CH) doesn’t make sense.
I played around a little bit with the allocation, and you can allocate 20% to EM (max) and 40% to World ex CH. The remaining 37% can be split to 37% World ex CH hedged (I know, the hedging does impose additional costs), or something like 30% World ex CH hedged and 7% SMI/SPI.
I guess the main question is: is hedging better than allocating a high percentage to Swiss stocks only?
btw: not sure if any of you checked already, but the TER for the used ETFs are as low as 0.003% (CSIF SMI). All of the CS ETFs they are using are for institutional investors. If it wasn’t for the 6’826 CHF threshold per year and the 0.53% TER of VIAC (and maybe also the CS forex costs), then those funds would be a nice alternative. At least for me I was surprised that the TER costs differ that much for invididual vs institutional investors.
From the point of passive indexing, and given i would not want any home bias: yes, you are right, it does not make sense. however swiss regulations requires some fraction (35%?? anyone remembers the number?) if CHF-denominated (!) assets. VIAC has to enforce this, ant i think i remember their simulators don’t bother, but if you are setting your actual portfolio, this restriction applies.
I think CHF-hedged funds (world, i.e.) count towards that “swiss-fraction”, but i dont want any hedged stuff
correct and my stomach tells me i better go SPI extra than hedging, but i dont have good reasons beyond my stomach.
that’s true on paper. still CS (CreditSuisse) needs to make money out of those funds, and they for sure don’t accopmlish this via TER. they have higher spreads etc… I don’t think they are anywhere close to vanguard in terms of savyness 
Indeed, I only simulated different options for the portfolio, but didn’t save it. Will check that, since I don’t have any money paid yet (only opened the account some days ago).
Totally agree. The TER is just one of the factors for the overall costs. My personal experiences with CS are also quite bad (but that wasn’t for ETFs). It was just interesting that institutional investors get much lower TERs. But ok, of course it’s not a fair game here (private vs professional).
Vanguard is definetely the best choice for mustachians 
VIAC pays fees to CS (outside of the TER) that why the displayed TER is so low.
VIAC needs to follow the limitation of CHF assets, however if you look at the big picture in taking into account your overall portfolio (3a + non 3a), I would assume that home bias is small.
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I’d assume there’s actually no spread. As @wapiti mentioned the fees are paid/negotiated directly from viac to cs and come out of the 0.5% cost of viac.
Wrong. They indeed have spreads!! Check out the factsheets. Besides the outrageous 0.75% FX markup these hidden spreads are also not highlighted by VIAC at all. I previously had a look at a few of their funds spreads here - worst contenders:
- CH bonds: 0.35% spread
- Emerging bonds: 0.50% spread
- European Real Estate: 0.31% spread
… and mind you: Swiss Real Estate has 0.84% TER … while the mobile app says 0.00% …
With VIAC the devil is really in the detail
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Thanks for looking those up (though note that subscription and redemption spreads don’t seem symmetrical, so the practical spread is somewhat lower).
For those wondering, for Swiss real estate, the 0.84% is for the inner funds (it’s a fund of funds).
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