There is no average investor! Some start their first job and have 50 years of saving ahead, some have 10 years, and some are already consuming their wealth.
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Fair point
So it should be more seen from view point of duration of accumulation phase vs consumption phase ?
% of stocks = 120 minus age in years 
.
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My default recommendation for DYI investors that donât know, donât understand or donât care about investing is:
- 50% Vanguard LifeStrategy 60% (Distributing)
- 50% UBS Vitainvest 50% Passive Q
This brought through a Swiss Bank that has no material fees on the actual Wealth nor transaction fees beyond 1% (not Swissquote; neither any other broker)
From there, depending both their capability and interest to deal with investments, the recommendation can be further railored to move towards better products and a smarter asset allocation.
Unless someone had more than 10 years of Investment experience, I would never recommend more than max. 60-70% shares. Meaning you could replace the Vitainvest 50 with the 75% one; but thats it.
Everything else, particularely if it involves rebalancing, shares only ETF or brokers (even Swissquote) doesnt work for joe sixpackâŠ
UBS Vitainvest (NOT bought through UBs) is in my view the most underappreciated Investment product in Switzerland. Not good for you and me, as its a CH registered fund⊠but otherwise its an amazing deal, when you consider both cost, performance and complexity. Someone thatvwas challenged with taxes or two products, I lean towards vitainvest and not the lifestrategy one.
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Itâs not that I want to match that
But I think most retail investors completely ignore bonds when they are such a large asset class
Is that driven by knowledge or just chasing returns ?
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I think CHF is weird with the sub 1% bond returns (which can make it even closer to 0 when you take fees into account), and Iâm not quite sure a lot of the general advice on bonds really apply in those conditions.
(Most currencies have more like 2-3% return on safe bonds, when the economy is stabilized, with inflation at target etc.)
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I think it creates greater disparities between retail and institutional investors, that benefits us. When rates are very low, savings accounts, medium term notes and probably other products provide better interests than bonds (while they remain very low).
Iâd say that for Swiss investors, cash (in a savings account) can make more sense than bonds under certain conditions.
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You have tax drag (even if the yield is 0 or negative, the coupons often are much higher).
And looking at e.g. (or other bond fund total return):
https://www.ishares.com/ch/individual/en/products/287362/ishares-sbi-esg-aaa-bbb-bond-index-fund-ch#chartDialog
Itâs hard to stay the course when you have that kind of performance over 5 or 10y, while still having fairly high volatility 
There can be some reflexion there but I donât think it needs to be too long or detailed when cash outperforms longer term bonds. Iâd think strategically about how much fixed income I want in my portfolio, then tactically about what kind of fixed income (including cash or bonds) it should be (and under what conditions that might change).
Yes.
For fixed income, unlike for stocks, the terms of the contract are known beforehand. Credit risk can be broadly categorized such that similar products can be compared and some can be objectively better to reach your goals.
Passive approaches will work good enough and save time (which is valuable too) but I think active management has a place in the fixed income part of the porftolio if one wants to practice optimization.
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Actually if market crashes , bonds will go up in value but cash in saving accounts will not.
Point is that in the end itâs all about where money moves. Most of the times people only care about returns on investment. But there are sometimes where they care about return of investment. Those are times when bonds peak.
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Yes I agree.
And I always wonder if Finpension is able to find a way to get back US WHT , why UBS Vitainvest cannot do the same.
Do you have examples or suggestions for Swiss Banks that offer the UBS Vitainvest Passive Q funds with low custody/transaction fees?
They seem to be available at Swissquote with the CHF 9 flat fee. Most banks seem to have high custody fees, though, and itâs often unclear whether these funds are even offered.
Does anyone know whether these funds are available at Saxo (with the CHF 8 flat fee)? I donât have an account and canât find a public list of available mutual funds.
Vanguard doesnât have Swiss variants of these funds, unfortunately, so the bonds in these funds will mainly be EUR or EUR-hedged, which seems like a bad idea for Swiss investors. Whatâs your reasoning for recommending that over just holding UBS Vitainvest Passive? Is the intention to lower the Swiss home bias?
I donât see them on Saxo.
But I donât know if I have full access to everything.
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