Swiss Small/Mid Cap ETFs

Investing / Portfolios
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In an effort to diversify my portfolio, I am strongly contemplating investing in an ETF covering Swiss small and/or mid cap companies.

In theory, this should be quite easy through the SPI Extra

However, in practice I did not find many ETFs that suit my purposes. Here are a few I found:

UBS ETF (CH) SPI® Mid (CHF) A-dis

Seems like a default option for my purposes, covers 80 titles, TER at 0.25% is quite attractive.

iShares SMIM® ETF (CH)
https://www.ishares.com/ch/individual/en/products/261155/ishares-smim-ch-fund

Less depth, only 30 titles. TER at 0.45% is higher than the UBS alternative. Prima vista, less attractive to me.

CSIF (CH) Equity Switzerland Small & Mid Cap

The black horse among the three. This one has been mentioned in here before and even made it into the forum’s recommendations list, but I frankly still do not fully understand this type of instrument. It’s not an ETF, it has fixed spreads, the fees are unclear however (it says 0%, but I find that hard to believe). Anyone has got experience with this one? Maybe @nugget who wrote about it before?

What do you think? Any other ETFs/Funds to mention?

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The CS one, CH0110869143, I bought/own via Finpension 3a.
It’s a fund only for pension products AFAIK, hence the ZB & “for qualified investors” top right, and it would be interesting to know if anyone owns it outside of a pension product.

Here’s what Finpension says about a fund compared to an ETF.
"Indexfunds
Like ETFs, index funds are passive investment instruments. However, index funds have two major advantages over ETFs:
Withholding taxes on foreign dividends and interest income can be reclaimed thanks to an investor group control system.
There are no stamp duties on the purchase and sale of the funds (0.075 % each saved for Swiss ETFs and 0.15 % each for foreign ETFs)."

Disadvantage is certainly the spread defined by CS and not the market.

3

There is also a UBS SMIM version:

Only a little smaller (920 vs. 1’200mCHF) but much cheaper (0.27%) than the one from BlackRock - but still only 30 titles though…

4

There is a traditional index fund at CS that tracks SPI Extra.

To my knowledge, there is no ETF.

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That’s exactly the ETF I have for my home bias. I keep around 10% of by asset allocation in this ETF and I have so far happy with it. I bought it on DEGIRO as the fees are low there. If I remember correctly @_MP also uses this ETF in his portfolio.

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You are right, I linked the institutional product. However, they have the same product for private investors as well (CH0222624659). It comes with a TER of 0.18%.

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That’s the one I meant, right.

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Is there any difference with the UBS one above except the TER?

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How would you choose your home bias ETF? I see you focus on small & mid cap (e.g., with the SMIM), although there are only 30 companies in, so not very diversified. For example, CHSPI focuses on large cap but is more diversified and has a TER of 0.1%. Wouldn’t be a better option?

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It is more broad, covering 80 titles outside the SMI

I specifically look for something that gives me exposure to stocks outside the SMI. Most SMI titles are already covered in my World ETFs or especially heavily in my 3a VIAC Global 100.

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