Swiss investors and FX risk / Modified VT

Investing / Portfolios
30

This is coming back to the question: where do you plan to retire? If you are going to retire in Switzerland (one of the most expensive countries, not ideal for the RE part of FIRE), you are right: the performance goes down.

If you are planning to live as a digital nomad (most probably sounds better than it really is in reality), you won’t care about the performance in CHF. If USD is still one of the harder currencies, you can still live a good life in other countries with weaker currencies.

So it comes down to: where do I see myself living in 20 years. Distributing your investments in different currencies might make sense then, but which currencies do you choose? CHF, USD, EUR, NOK?
It’s a question which is really difficult to answer.

1 Like
31

I’ve edited my answer to make it clearer. Interesting/sad is that the amount I’ve earned is halved once I compare the CHF spent until now vs CHF value vs USD spent vs USD value.

32

I am doing the calc in quite a similar fashion - tracking:

  • CHF sent in vs. Current (with “live” fx)
  • Purchase price in USD vs. Current

For me the diff is currently 13.5% vs. 17.3% - so definitely not negligible. :slight_smile:
Of course, this largely depends on when was what bought/sold.

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33

28% usd, 14% chf. At least it’s positive anyway.

I wonder if there is a graph somewhere showing the price of VT with and without FX with chf.

I still wonder if it makes sense to see every single transaction FX difference. I might see that my latest transactions might show positive in USD and negative in CHF. I might temporarily stop buying…

2 Likes
34

Wouldn’t u get that comparison (at least approximately, but enough exact for most purposes) if you compare VT and VWRL (in CHF).

35

If you dont mind, can you share this tracking sheet (of course, after removing your records)

36

That’s not something which is worth to share. You can do it yourself in 2 minutes.
It’s basically:

  • first column of the row: date of the month (e.g. 01.09.2020)
  • then each column is one account (different bank accounts, IB, Revolut)
  • last two columns are: net worth in CHF and net worth in EUR (approx. rate, which I set at the beginning of each year…)

If you are searching for a good spreadsheet, you can use the one from @MrRIP. He has links to the ETFs and current conversion rates. You can find it here

3 Likes
37

Maybe time has come to write a post explaining the formulas and rationale behind my spreadsheet(s) :slight_smile:

9 Likes
38

FWIW Sharesight tracks returns on your portfolio and subtracts/adds FX delta to calculate your real return.

You can integrate it with IBKR so your trades are updated automatically.

It’s not perfect but easy to set up.

P.S. I ended up building a spreadsheet using @MrRIP’s :pray:t2:

3 Likes
39

Nice site.
We should build something similar.