Likely yes, but there is zero chance all of them or a lot of them do so at the same time. It wont matter if a 1% country in my ex-US index expropriates their stock market.
You are exposed to tons of countries. That‘s the whole idea of diversification, to mitigate such idiosyncratic risks.
That‘s the key part here. If you invest only in one country, you are sibject to one country….
EXUS is MSCI World exUS = all developed countries outside of the USA and no emerging markets
XMME is MSCI Emerging Markets = no developed countries
So there should actually be no overlap at all
How on earth can you have so much in the 2nd pillar? Did you buy into it? Or work already 30 years?
XMME is for emerging markets
EXUS for developed markets ( ex US)
IMO there is no scenario where exUS could outperform the US stock market in todays world. The 2 times exUS outperformed over a longer period was due to Japan and later emerging markets. Both long gone.
IMO, it doesn’t look that bad, but I guess you could start DCAing into ex-US ETFs if you wanted to reduce US exposure.
You could also look at other asset classes.
That‘s absolute hubris in my eyes and recency biased.
Empires fall all the time.
And todays world quickly turns into tomorrow‘s world.
We invest for our whole life, not just some years.
Also ex-US currently does outperform. So what timeframe even?
I have been working for over 25years, yes. But it’s a bit misleading: I work for an international organization and I don’t have any rights to AVS/AI or unemployment, so no first pillar. No defined pension either. Just a retirement fund similar to a US 401k.
And my retirement fund is considered by the Swiss tax authorities as a second pillar. So that’s why I describe it like that, but admittedly it’s not the full story.
I had understood ex-US as including developing markets. But glad you made me go check the holdings.
What’s the 2nd pillar invested in? Since it is the biggest portion, if that is non-US, then isn’t your US exposure then quite low?
How do you know for sure? This looks like a bold statement but what are the reasons?
As we know for stock market to outperform; the performance needs to be more than what’s already expected & priced in
I have no visibility unfortunately on the holding, just the broad asset categories. Which does not help my risk management. But given that this thing has not given me much more than
LPP rates, I suspect there is not much US equities in there…
Not Cortana, but there are some points, which are in my opinion very important:
Dominance of US tech companies: largest and fastest-growing companies in the world are in the US. They are driving innovation in AI, cloud computing, semiconductors and platform economies of the world. No other country has a comparable concentration of productive high-tech capital. Addendum: we will continue to transform to tech; tech companies will be banks some day, tech companies will be the ones who are dosing your drugs on your individual behalf, tech companies are handling the purchase process of real estate, etc.
The US market ist the most liquid and efficient in the world; access to venture capital, PE, IPO markets: startups and growth companies aroung the world aim to raise capital or get listed in the US.
Despite the current mess in the US politics: the US offers a high level of property rights protection, independent judiciary, and reliable regulation in global comparison. Donald is for another three years POTUS, but think in the longer-term.
Leading in patents, research spending, universities, and business creation. The US attracts global talent “brain drain” - ex-US countries often lose their best minds.
Global commodity prices, international debt, global trade: all are often denominated in USD. This structurally strenghtens US companies, while many ex-US countries are vulnerable to currency crises.
Since the financial crisis, the MSCI USA has massively outperformed MSCI ex-US - wwith hardly any reversal periods. The brief phses of outperformance (e.g. EM in early 2000s) were often driven by special effects (e.g. China boom), which are no longer present today.
Structural issues in many ex-US markets: Europe has aging population, litte tech exposure, heavy regulation, fragmented markets. Japan has deflation, stagnant growth, low innovation capacity. EM has unstable currencies, political risks, lack of scalable companies.
Since MSCI world ETFs contain an US exposure of ca. 60%, which is in my personal opinion a clear sign.
Note: I diversified my portfolio als well, but main regions are CH and US (therefore CHF and USD).
This is all status quo and everything listed can change a lot in 20 years time.
Nothing in this world is permanent.
Europe was once leading in a lot of the points here. Of course nobody sees that changing for now. But it could very well change in 20 years.
I mean go back to early 2000s, not long ago. 2000-2009 S&P returned negative after inflation, while europe did pretty well.
Then of course the tech boom started.
This can easily happen again though.
There is nothing fundamentally stopping new tech giants emerging outside the US and maybe europe gets their acts together after a Trump 2.0 further deteriorates the US? The US is more divided then ever (storming of the capitol remebers anyone? Almost a coup happened…), might even get to a civil war in a decade between libs and reps? There is a lot of social tension in the US.
Who knows?
And exactly why nobody knows, you should diversify (which you seem to do, so not directed at you specifically here, just a general statement)
Funnily enough I think both @Tony1337 and @xerox5003 are right 
Thanks for sharing your view.
But I have to be honest - I am sure investors said something similar about Japan as well in 1980s and also for US internet companies during dot com boom before half of these „tech companies“ went down the drain.
I have said this earlier too. Being a good company or country and being a good investment is not the same thing. How much you pay for investments matter the most. I cannot imagine a scenario where US keeps outperforming the world forever and end up becoming 90% of stock market at some point. This is not practical.
There are many people outside US, a large portion of world GDP is outside US as well. It’s naive to assume that they cannot catchup.
Anyway- not trying to justify overweight or underweight US. In the end all markets should perform similar if diversified.
I am just challenging this assumption of US dominance forever. Remember -: Sun never sets on the British empire used to be a thing 
Also I don’t think the US budget can go on like this forever, it’s going to hit a wall at some point, at which point it could have some drastic consequences.
(Tho probably just lowering the US/USD exposure might not be sufficient to avoid the impact, given how embedded USD and USD debt is in the global financial systems)
According to “how to lie with statistics” you should always find a period where one region outperformed the other, random statistical nonsense based on the rule of too little data. The more data (time) the more “real” are the statistics. So, a little tip: if you want no-nonsense statistics use as much data as possible!
I invest in the USA since 45 years. The out performance is that high that with compounding I made many many times what I would have made in other regions. I did spend already that much of that money that I think all U.S. stocks could go to zero and I would still be better off than to have invested in Europe. Think about that!
Now the tech boom startet in the 90’s and busted in 2000 where you would have to wait until 2017 to make money:
Of course nobody knows the future. I see bad signs for stockholders all over the world in many countries, including Switzerland. Populism, left or right, is against us. The chance of expropriating stockholders in one form or another is the smallest in the USA. Just to repeat that point.
While not expropriation, we just went through the section 899 drama which was removing quite a bit of stability/trust in the US for foreign investors, bypassing existing systems like DTA… (thankfully was killed by the Senate, but I don’t know if the Senate will always stay that reasonable)
Then what about the withholding tax drama in Switzerland? 133% higher tax for U.S. citizen investing in Switzerland than for Swiss citizen investing in the USA. Not sure but I think the double tax treaty only gives back the lower tax on dividends…
It is nice for us that it came out the way it did, but it is not fair and it just proofs my point.
And yes, I would call this expropriation like any tax. It is needed but it is expropriation…
