All-World Stocks portfolio 2024

It comes down to your strategy and regional allocation. It seems you want to be passive but with some sort of active intent. So based on what is your active intent, you might need to choose funds accordingly.

  1. If you want to invest in whole world and don’t care which countries represent what, then got for VT (or an alternate from ishares or SPDR even though 1-1 equivalent doesn’t exist)

  2. If you want to play with allocation to US vs non-US then VTI and VXUS would work out well

  3. If you want to play with allocation to Developed world ve emerging markets then VEA, VFEM might be needed

Some people use two funds to diversify and harvest tax losses but not sure if that is actually relevant for people living in CH. And some might own two different funds from different fund houses to mitigate fund house specific risk.

Just keep in mind to always look for tracking difference of ETFs you choose. I notice that people are very much worried about TER while ignoring tracking differences. A very good example of this is VWRL where 0.22 % TER seems quite high while it’s tracking difference versus it’s benchmark is almost zero.

The 15% WHT topic is about US portion of the stocks within ETF. If the fund is domiciled in US, then you don’t lose that 15% WHT but if the fund is domiciled in Ireland , you lose it. However for the stocks which are from companies in other countries , this would depend on tax treaty between US and other countries or IE and other countries. I remember seeing on this forum a very good analysis about US vs IE funds in terms of tax advantages. Try to search for it.

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You can get similar tax credit for VXUS - but keep in mind that on an equivalent Irish ETF no such withholding tax would be charged in the first place (when the fund distributes to you).

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