Complementary small caps etf for VWRL?

Investing / Portfolios
1

Hi
My assets are VWRL and CHSPI.
I’m revising my strategy so I’m thinking of rebalancing lowering exposure of large caps and USA.
For what I’ve understood VWRL is large mid cap only.
I was thinking to add small caps, but cannot find a world small caps etf with reasonable Ter and good size.
First of all I’m not sure it’s a good idea, I’d like to know more from you. If it’s not a good idea stop reading here.

So I guess if you’re reading here it’s not such a bad idea :smile:

Since VWRL is around 60% USA I was thinking that idea could be useful to rebalance towards europe buying for example a Europe small cap (that excludes swiss since I’m already having CHSPI, if I can find one).
I can eventually add a separate smaller USA small caps if needed.

Thanks

PS maybe I’m just overthinking, I don’t like overcomplicate portfolios but going from 2 to 3 or 4i think it’s Stille reasonable :thinking:

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Hello,

You could complement it with Avantis etf AVDV with 1387 holdings for 0,36% fees.
https://www.avantisinvestors.com/avantis-investments/avantis-international-small-cap-value-etf/

And the us version AVUV with 782 holdings for 0,25% fees
https://www.avantisinvestors.com/avantis-investments/avantis-us-small-cap-value-etf/

You will diversify from vanguard as an emitter with avantis.

You should read few other threads on the subject.

This one about the interest of the tilt

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AVUV and AVDV as suggested above.

Other than that, for US - SLYV is also a solid one, at 0.15%.
(I started with that, then added/switched to Avantis ones)

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How much of your portfolio would you put into the small cap fund?

How much do you currently have in the SPI and why the overexposure to CH?

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Was about to ask this, too.

I wouldn’t bother unless you intend to make it a 20 or 30% of your (equity fund) portfolio or more.

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I’m 60% VWRL 40% CHSPI.
I had good offers at the beginning buying CHSPI with very cheap fees so I started a bit overexposed on CH with the intention to reach an 80% 20% in some years buying only VWRL.
Now I can do it just buying VWRL but I was thinking of small caps for diversification reasons.

I would also start introducing bonds but since now was not convenient and I guess it’s still not very convenient, but let’s keep this thing out since I need more know how on that.

thanks

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I mean, personally I would not add any SPI at all unless I had a convincing reason that makes me think CH will outperform the rest of the world.

How much small cap do you want to have in the end? As San_Francisco said, everything below 20-30% doesn’t make any sense.

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Good question, well first of all nobody told me if it’s a good idea or not but now some of you are telling below 20-30% makes no sense.
I’d like to know why.
Anyway I was thinking something around 10-15% initially but mostly because I’m not sure and I don’t know if it’s too risky or would be better if I spend my time informing about bonds.

About AVDV Ter seems high and I couldn’t find it on justetf and that makes me feel not sure.

10

My idea is just to not be overexposed over 5% for one single holding
For that reason i still have my goal to not buy any more chspi.
It’s just my assumption that makes sense from a common sense or diversification or safety point of view. But i could be wrong.
From single country i guess below 40% it’s fine.

  1. So i can buy more VWRL to reach a 75-25 ratio in stocks this year and completing the 80-20 next year, and start learning about bonds and small cap for the next rebalancing. This gives me a good feeling of having fulfilled my initial strategy.

  2. or i can reach a similar ratio buying some AVDV but I’m not really convinced. I’m reading about small caps just now, I’ve the feeling i don’t have enough knowledge and the high ter discourage me.

Ok the more i write the more I’m into the first.
Thank you guys

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On a side note, justETF is for ETFs domiciled in Europe: ETF portfolios made simple | justETF
Avantis is a US fund managing company, you’ll find their ETFs on etfdb: List of All ETFs - Exchange Traded Funds | ETF Database

If you’re not sure of the differences between US and, for the main part, Ireland domiciled ETFs, I’d use Ireland as my default and learn about the specificities of US ETFs (whitholding but also estate tax) before choosing if I want to make the dive.

There are funds with another domicile than Ireland on justETF, I would do some research about them before investing in them too.

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This is because it is a personal decision about your personal investment strategy. Nobody wants to be blamed if after few years you figure out that the small cap underperform the rest. Or other way around, if someone convinces you to abandon this idea and they overperform, nobody wants to be blamed either.

But if you want my opinion, I think that the only reliable way to overperform the market long term is to use leverage. Size, sectors, countries, factors etc. are overperforming until they don’t.

Yes because if you decide to add small caps, it should be a significant part of the portfolio, otherwise it won’t have any effect. Well, you can add missing small caps to reach market weights, but most probably it also won’t make a big difference.

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Well, you literally told people in your original post…:

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We know from history that small cap indices are highly correlated to mid/large cap indices covering the same region. They both keep moving in a very similar direction - even when one of them outperforms the respective other.

While you may indeed own less „large“ stocks (hence be more „diversified“), your return will hardly be different.

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Thank you @San_Francisco @Dr.PI you have added value to this thread
Much appreciated

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Another consideration: are you accounting for your 3a assets when thinking about your allocation? What matters is how your total portfolio behaves, so they should be included.

VIAC has:

  • CSIF World ex CH Small Cap - PF (for 0.09% more TER than the basic solutions)
  • CSIF World ex CH Small Cap Hedged - PF (same 0.09% additional costs)
  • Swisscanto World ex CH Small Cap Resp. - IPF (no additional cost)
  • Swisscanto World ex CH Small Cap Resp. Hedged - IPF (no additional cost)
  • CSIF SPI Extra (no additional cost)
  • Swisscanto SPI Extra (no additional cost)

I’m sure Finpension offers similarly good alternatives.
Frankly. includes 13% SPI Extra and 10% World ex CH Small Cap in their passive solutions (taken from the Extreme 95 one, ratios may vary depending on the stock exposure).

Swiss mid-small caps can be used to reduce exposure to the US and Nestlé-Novartis-Roche.
World ex CH small caps can be used to reduce exposure in individual companies.

A mix of Europe ex CH, Pacific, Canada and EM can be used to reduce exposure to both CH and the US (add in some SPI Extra for swiss stocks without the top 20 ones if you so wish.

My take on this is: choosing a personal allocation/strategy is personal, what matters is that we are willing and able to stick to it when it is ineluctably going to lag the market/the shiny winners of others. I would read and educate myself, then set on an allocation I am comfortable with, then keep it, comes hell or high waters.

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7 posts were merged into an existing topic: Alternatives to cap-based weighting in index funds

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Great, we still copy posts that we don‘t like away… and move them into other threats? Good job @admins to ensure you stay in your echo chamber. Will hence delete my losts again. Pitty…

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@TeaGhost: This thread isn’t the right thread to address admin/moderators’ decisions. That said, I don’t think the comment about echo chambers and disliking posts warranted. In facto, I don’t think that was the intention at all.

I believe it was nothing more than an honest attempt at moving your posts into from one thread to a more appropriate thread. From a (this) thread in which they’re a only tangentially related to the original question - to a thread where they are squarely on-topic.

Admittedly, I do consider this style of moderation (splitting threads and sometimes moving related posts to other threads) as somewhat unusual and haven’t seen it much on other community-moderated online forums. But I believe it works very well here, as it helps keeping threads more focused and on-topic (i.e. discussing the original question from the title).

Not seeing any ill will here at all - and wish you hadn’t deleted your posts.

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Hey, why would you ever think that someone moved your posts into another thread because they don’t like them? I moved a part of the discussion to another, more appropriate thread because, according to my judgement, it started to deviate from the original discussion of this thread. This is kind of a habit in this forum to try to keep similar discussions in one thread. This is not a censorship. Your posts are valuable contributions which I, and surely others, would like to see in this forum.

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In my view, this is not an unusal stile - this is violent. If I want a post to be in a certain threat; I post it there. If someone else pushes my posts around, it leaves the notion that my posts were (at least in the original threat) not appreciated and considered spam.

Thank you so much. Deleted my responses to this threat again. You don‘t like them - I won‘t keep them.