Bonds for a Swiss investor in 2020

https://ceanet.ch/conditions/

You can find the list of funds here http://www.immofunds.ch/site/files/torga/ch_immo_funds_20190820.pdf Some of them are commercial real estate so not for you. Some of them can’t be bought.

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I wonder myself which non share investments I should include, if any (I am older as well, so it‘s often recommended, even though pension funds basically play the same role as bonds).

Are there any real estate ETFs that you would recommend? And I checked Immofunds, their price basically went through the roof the last year. Isn‘t that then more share-like than bond-like?

I found this video regarding REITs very interesting, even though not specific for Swiss investors, the gist should be the same:

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Where’s the catch with this CEA? Is it like a normal bank with all guarantees up to 100kCHF per person?

I see on their page:

Avec nos comptes épargne, vous constituez un capital garanti, sans frais bancaires et à des taux d’intérêts attractifs.

That is a normal bank, except they don’t have shareholders that’s why it is better for the customers.

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I (33,m) keep my portfolio simple:

Bonds for me: 15%
BVG (Pillar 2)
Cash (Emergency Fund)

Indexfund: 80%
VT
Viac Global 100 (Pillar 3)

High-Risk / Hedge: 5%
Cryptocurrencies
Stockpicking

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I prefer not to recommend any fund. Yes they are expensive at the time, but not all of them :slight_smile:
If you compare the 3 asset class over 5 years you get that : (EDIT : the real estate index on this graph also includes commercial real estate which is more volatile than housing)

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After the last weeks, this is what happend…

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I agree with a lot of what has been said but would like to add that it is important to distinguish between risk capacity and risk tolerance, and that these two vary from person for person (this is why financial advisors are required to care about the suitability of the advice given to each client).

Even if a person has the capacity at 25 to go all into stocks, because they would objectively not need this money, it may nevertheless be a mistake to do so if this person does not have the risk tolerance for that much stock as well. Overlooking this can lead to emotion-driven reactions at the next crisis, selling at the worst possible time, and getting back to the market when it has already recovered. Having a risk-free part in the portfolio makes this more unlikely to happen.

The last major crisis is now more than 10 years ago. Many investors who recently joined the market have not yet experienced such a durable crisis and tend to underestimate the strength of will that it takes to go through them.

Am I forgetting 2020 and the lockdown? I am not: this year was special in many ways and markets went down faster than anytime in modern history last February and March. But we are now just a couple of months later, and the S&P 500 is already close to an all time high again, which can give a feeling of overconfidence. Also, this crisis is still ongoing and we do not know what will happen in the coming years after such a brutal drop of GDP and billions of people in a very difficult personal situation.

Crises, in the past, often involved markets going down a bit slower that what we saw in 2020, but durably over several years. Several years is a lot more than a couple of weeks. The temptation becomes increasingly high to sell in the middle of a drop with no end in sight, and many miss the recovery.

Of course, bonds have a risk too: inflation. And stocks do provide safety against it in the long term, but at the cost of high fluctuations. In the end, the choice of asset allocation is a personal decision that everybody has to make for themselves, and adjust with time, preferably between crises.

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Interesting topic.
What is you view on the following: Due to the current uncertainty and high stock prices I am considering making my portfolio more safe (I know that comes with the price of missing out new highs): On top of the second pillar and cash reserve for 3 months I want to buy some very safe ETF (in CHF or EUR) - maybe bonds…
Reason is I currently have 10-12 months of cash reserve which is to high but I dont want to put everything into the stock market right now.
What is your view on that?

I guess the safest asset class now is just CHF cash?

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Or is USD now “cheap” so buy a bit of those for future purchases? :slight_smile:
But it’s rather a FX speculation. :grin:
Probably makes sense to keep CHF, as it’s the currency we mostly spend in here.

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Assuming the CHF is safe, yes. Bonds have a risk (very low in probability, but high in CHF’s) with a possible raise in interest rates. So why take any risk, for negative yields?

This is something I’m thinking about, in the context of money printing. Which kind of impact on CHF, Swiss economy, real-estate market, etc. could have the fact that SNB is the biggest money printer as compared to GDP?

More worth to monitor (IMHO) is the SNB’s own capital compared to the total liabilities. Currently it is not too worrisome (163.8 billion / 956 billion). But given the growth of the balance sheet and the fluctuations of assets prices, who knows what could happen if the ratio becomes too close to 0%… Perhaps some large bank somewhere in the world would issue an internal note recommending to clients to sell CHF assets… If the SNB suddenly needs in its turn to sell some of their USD/EUR/… assets (after years of buying anything), at a lower price, then we could perhaps have a nice feedback loop where the SNB’s own capital is solidly in negative territory. That could be fun :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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There’s a lot more nuance to that… I’d even argue the reverse would be worse, many people want to buy CHF, it’s reasonable to give it to them (and increase the balance sheet) instead of making the swiss economy uncompetitive.

(You’ll note that contrary to other central banks, they didn’t even increase the balance sheet to smooth out liquidity triggered by the 2020 crisis, most of the increase was while defending the exchange rate)

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But if the CHF loses value, the SNB assets would likely increase right? (as they are denominated in not-CHF)

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The biggest asset of a central bank is its credibility anyway.

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Clearly it a force that tends to protect the CHF’s value relatively to the foreign currencies the SNB is invested in. Now, the asset prices do fluctuate in their own currencies (again, it can be positive or negative)…

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