I wondered what the final conclusion is on rebalancing 3a: Shall I deactivate it or not?
In this thread, high spreads were mentioned, trading in CHF instead of USD etc., all resulting in higher costs. Pooling & netting does not seem to help.
However, I have come across studies in favor of rebalancing. What’s your take?
So I take it you wouldn’t recommend rebalancing in a 100% global stock portfolio (e.g. 80% MSCI World, 10% Emerging Markets and 10% Small Caps)?
Why rebalance a 100% stock portfolio? I assume that your asset allocation (90% World 10% EM) is replicating VT. If you turn on rebalancing you’ll slowly drift away from your desired allocation. Let’s assume EM has a great decade and outperforms the rest, VT is 80% World and 20% EM in 10 years. With turned on rebalancing you’ll still be at 90/10.
But there are still new investments from cashflow. I guess you’ll have to adjust from time to time anyway.
Thanks, this is very helpful. It makes perfect sense to me that rebalancing counters the idea of a market-weighted global stock portfolio.
I also like the fact of hereby avoiding any hidden costs involved with rebalancing. It’s always felt a little murky to me (spreads, fx costs etc)
Btw, keep in mind that Vanguard is using FTSE indices and Swiss 3rd pillar solutions are using MSCI indices. South Korea is a developed market in FTSE and an emerging market in MSCI. So currently EM makes up 9.9% of the world in FTSE and 11.3% in MSCI.
This I don’t understand. Do you mean the CHF >7500 per year? Which would not be allocated to my current positions automatically?
Excellent, thanks, I’ll try to replicate as precisely as possible. I’m currently going through a very painful process of rebalancing all my assets due to my former emerging markets overweight of 20% 
I don’t even want to know what all these transactions will cost me.
Just buy more non-EM outside of 3rd pillar, and look at all your assets as a whole.
Not really costly.
Good point, but in my situation not possible I fear. I’m switching from a 80% MSCI World / 20% EM portfolio (in broker and 3a accounts) to investing in VT. So I need to reduce EM allocations to 10%, because investing in VT from now on won’t help bringing EM allocation down. And buying more MSCI World would be super costly because this position lies with an exorbitantly expensive broker (I use a different one for VT)…
Of course, buying more MSCI World with my cheap broker would help, but I’d like to keep my VT account and my MSCI World/EM account separate, just for simplicity
How would you lose one of them?
Yes, that’s my reason for using two brokers. Just never laying all eggs in to one basket 
The only free lunch we got is diversification. I’m diversifying like crazy in VT with its 9000+ stocks, so why would I concentrate on one single broker? Any company or even country can go broke or rogue. With regards to IB: It’s so huge it’s become scary to me. And even if there is insurance etc.: Good luck with international lawsuits!
I keep the rebalancing option in VIAC for matter of simplicity and stick to their Global 100 strategy again for simplicity. So far, I’m not disappointedr by their product
Ever thought of Finpension? They allow higher stock allocations without CHF currency minimum or currency hedging. To my knowledge, replicating MSCI ACWI or VT is not possible with Viac without costly currency-hedging.
I tought about Finpension, but I don’t want neither try to replicate VT with VIAC. I’m happy with the simplicity of their strategy and their volatility. I know that I overweight Switzerland, but I’m fine with it as my VIAC account won’t be my main investment in my total “portfolio”.
Also, I prefered VIAC than Finpension, for now. I will see the opportunity to open a 4th or 5th account on Finpension maybe.