That’s easy innit? “Diversification is the only free lunch in investing”. EM tilt is concentration. Mic drop
P.S. EMs could/would/should have Eed by now, feels to me like it’s generals fighting the last war because by some fluke of fate EMs outperformed once in human history. I’d personally just look at what is under EMs and pick a handful of countries and be done with it.
Not sure why we still call them emerging markets when they represent 60% of GDP (ppp), 80% of world’s population & 90% of world’s working population
What’s emerging about them ? They have already emerged 
Maybe we should rename the groups into
MSCI big world -: includes EM countries
MSCI others -: US, Europe etc
IIRC, small cap and EM tilt are in many investing books, might have seen in “random walk down wall street” (higher volatility, supposedly leading to higher long term return, but yeah the previous decades haven’t been kind to EM).
Well, the classification, e.g. MSCI, is actually about how well the stocks market is working and how well the rights of investors are upheld. There (used to be) the rule of law in developed markets.
They have capital (flow) controls.
They lack liquid capital markets and broad-based investor participation.
They often have a high currency risk.
They limit foreign ownership of domestic assets (beyond defense or similar).
They occasionally have government turnovers or coups (or just the South Korean president declaring martial law and getting ousted).
They have flourishing corruption.
The list goes on.
Anyway, this all makes long-term investing less predictable, reduces foreign investor confidence and weakens the rule of law (again predictability).
More risk? Definitely!
More return? We’ll … see?
Side note: again symptomatic for this topic for this answer – Goofy chastises himself for elaborating on EM versus not when OP asked for … well, something else, I think?
@PhilMongoose mentioned THE important point. What I called „Investment beliefs“ and he called „convinction“. No matter how good a strategy was, it will fail of it was not executed with conviction.
No matter to what extent we think that 100% Market Cap Weight beats anything, it doesnt help when the strategy was given up in the worst Moment.
Therefore, I generally tend to take the first proposal if the advise seeker, and slightly tilt it in the right direction (use SPI instead of DIv, Move US and ExUS to VWRL, …) small changes in the right direction, but still roughly aligned with the original conviction the user mentioned. Clearly, there is limits to that - in case someone came down with a completely ridiculous starting point.
So… where do I want to get down to? Just selling Vt or VWRL as a one-stop shop will do investors a dis-service if that gives them a Portfolio that they no longer embrace and beliefe in.
Its also the loss of conviction that became clear with the drastic changes from Version 1 to Version 2… that made me recommend going to a Robo Advisor instead, ensure no Time in the Market was lost… and then once Robo Advised build up a Investment beliefs / convictions instead.
Therefore, again - please don‘t just overrule everything with „go VWRL“.
For a moment I thought you were talking about US ;). But then you said South Korea 
Interesting development of the thread.
I recognise a tendency from when I started investing: Trying to optimize everything, leading to complexity.
However: you might change your mind about your strategy later anyways (and your don’t yet know how to invest practically nor how you’ll actually react to investing).
Which is where the following suggestion comes in:
You might
Allowing you to get started and learn about yourself and investing.
Caveat 1: You said you’re okay with volatility which I interpret as “you’ve informed yourself and know that the market will fall and crash from time to time and you commit to staying invested not if, but when your portfolio value declines”. If this is not the case, you might want to keep educating yourself before starting investing.
Caveat 2: obviously no investment advice.
Let me also write my advise to you and my past self.
Try to figure out your Risk tolerance/capacity etc. Read on the net - Check Ben Felix relevant video. Do what ever online tests exist. Check the result and be more conservative.
DCA into the stock market. (Not days but months and even years)
Buy a single WORLD etf “VT/VWRL/WRDUSY/WEBG etc & Relax”
If you feel like it, allocate ~20% in CHSPI.
So max 2 ETFs.
I wouldn’t bother with Gold, Silver, aluminium, stones, high dividend, sectors, crypto etc and anything that is <10% of your portfolio.
Will not make any difference in the outcome and will keep you wondering for ever!
Change your allocation if you really need to, after educating yourself.
If you have the urge to change something, hold on for some months. If you still want to make the change, most likely you are making a mistake. But hey, at least you had your time to change your mind
Hello!
Many thanks for your input and assessments. Your comments helped me to clearly structure the different perspectives and integrate them into my considerations. I have taken your points into account and appreciate your feedback.
Also, thanks to everyone for the valuable input, critical remarks, and food for thought – the discussions were absolutely crucial for my final decision.
After thorough analysis over the past few days (incl. PortfolioVisualizer backtests, risk metrics, correlations, drawdowns, and your feedback), I have now made my final decision regarding my long-term portfolio structure:
The focus is deliberately on global diversification, stable returns, and clearly limited risk (standard deviation approx. 14.5%, max drawdown approx. -16.7%).
Gold remains as long-term inflation protection and stability anchor, Bitcoin stays as a small asymmetric allocation.
The build-up will follow a cost averaging approach: CHF 10,000 will be invested monthly according to the allocation. Annual rebalancing will ensure long-term weight stability.
Thanks again – your feedback was essential for reaching this clean solution!
Good luck
In your backtest, was an allocation of 2% ever making a meaningful difference?
Maybe it is useful as a FOMO device?
Given the original poster has a long term horizon for investing 200k, I’ll throw a less conservative idea in the air:
You’ll get 1% dividend yield on XYZ
You’ll get the 50k option premium on XYZ + growth of your ETF
You potentially get a 20% increase on the 200k (thus: 40k) if the XYZ price increases (as the option premiums suggests the market expects)
You’re protected on the downside as you still break even if XYZ drops 25%
XYZ here is a real company/stock but I didn’t want to distract the discussion by mentioning it.
You can do this with a range of stocks with higher volatility as long as it’s not a pure speculative play (like microstrategy) but a company/industry you really believe in. XYZ in this case represents a semiconductor company with a unique market position.
I’m actually considering doing above myself and doing so with leverage by taking a 200k Lombard loan with my equity portfolio (or: part of it) as collateral.
Being unemployed has given me a lot more time to actively manage my assets and that’s been a great experience - (much) better returns from squeezing the assets more and gradually widening my aperture to explore investing plays which never crossed my mind when I was still working full time.
What at your top 5 holdings?
I try to do a monthly update. Here is the last one: Mechanical investment strategies - #34 by cubanpete_the_swiss