UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

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paddyreilly75
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UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by paddyreilly75 »

UK Investor looking to keep it simple with far to much cash and currently dollar cost averaging it in.
Late to investing. Unlike the US, most people in UK are more comfortable putting money into savings accounts and we don't have the same culture of investing from an early age.

Currently. just using a straight up VWRL Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF for SIPP and ISA (both tax free wrappers), which gives worldwide exposure to Large/Medium/Small caps across global equities

Unfortunately this gives 60% weighting to US / USD which is at an all time high against GBP. US stocks are also are really high P/E ratio compared to any other global markets. Obviously S&P 500 companies are more global companies than just US companies.

But take valuations of
- Apple which is now worth more than FTSE 100 index (also containing many non UK based global companies)
- Tesla which is now worth more than all other global car companies combined (Another question about Tesla though would be is it a car or software/robotics/production/battery company?)

Surely US is in dangerous value territory for non USD investor primarily?
I know the time in the market instead of timing the market but its easier to take this when you are US based

I was thinking of buying 5 ETFs to cover

Europe/UK
EM
Japan
Pacific region
and
US but GBP hedged at 50% instead of 60% as I'd be reducing my risk to currency and also have it more rebalanced at a market cap that is pre bubble levels

What do you think?
GAAP
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by GAAP »

One potential answer to that here: viewtopic.php?p=7151384#p7151384 -- but the whole thread is worth reading.

I would think you could get what you want with a mix of just Global and UK. That would certainly be simpler to manage.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by asset_chaos »

The typical answer is, what do you know that the totality of all other stock market participants don't. Another type of answer is, sure overweight the UK/Europe if you like. But why be complicated about it? Take the global fund and add one other fund to overweight UK, or underweight US if you like that perspective better. I personally wouldn't make that other fund more than 10% of my portfolio, but, of course, it's not my portfolio and only you have to be comfortable enough with your portfolio to be able to hold it through all the inevitable market gyrations you will experience in your investing life.

Regarding currency exposure, non-home market stocks is one of the few practical ways an ordinary person can diversify away from their home currency. Your labor income, your home, your savings, pension credits, and probably every other aspect of your financial life is denominated in your home currency. Having 80-something percent of your stocks diversified into other currencies is, from that point of view, probably not all that much. But again, you have to be happy in your portfolio.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by tubaleiter »

I'm also a UK investor, and I share a lot of your sentiments. The US feels overvalued - but it has felt that way for a long time, and underweighting the US would have cost you a LOT of growth over the last decade or so.

My other problem is that if you underweight the US, you have to overweight something else - which something else is worth overweighting right now? Europe, with Ukraine/energy prices/long term demographic issues? UK, with all that plus Brexit? Japan, with even bigger and nearer-term demographic issues? EM, with lots of governance issues, and the threat that the Chinese government could do something unpleasant? Pacific seems ok, but it's a lot of small markets. Don't forget Canada, but it has a lot in common with Europe.

So I've stuck with market weighting, except a modest bias to the UK (8.2% target instead of the 4.1% market weight). I'm hard-pressed to make a compelling logical argument for that home bias, but it's also small, not likely to move the needle too much if it's a bad call. UK does seem to be long-term undervalued for some strong companies, but also definitely some zombies in there. I can sleep at night with my allocation, so it must be ok!

I don't hedge any currencies, that's even harder to predict than equities. If GBP continues to slide, my non-UK holdings will increase in value when priced in GBP, so offsets that concern. If GBP appreciates, my smaller UK holdings appreciate, as do my cash/bonds in GBP, my salary, etc. I'm not willing to bet against the USD, which is basically what hedging US equities to GBP does.

Practically, your 5 ETF approach works, and it's not that complicated. I do something similar, even a bit more complicated, mostly for historic and tax-optimization reasons (I moved to the UK mid-career, still have some accounts in the US - you don't need to artificially add more complexity). Only note is that you are missing Canada. Whether Canada's 3.1% overall market weight is big enough to worry about or you just skip it is up to you - there are some Canada-only ETFs that you could add to the portfolio to close that gap, at a cost of marginally more complexity.

Other thought is that with 5 funds, it's useful to set some rules around rebalancing, to avoid fiddling because you have a hunch. The rules you set aren't actually that important, just that you stick to something. Keep it simple with annual or quarterly rebalancing, or do a rules-based approach, just pick something.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by paddyreilly75 »

asset_chaos wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 7:09 pm The typical answer is, what do you know that the totality of all other stock market participants don't. Another type of answer is, sure overweight the UK/Europe if you like. But why be complicated about it? Take the global fund and add one other fund to overweight UK, or underweight US if you like that perspective better. I personally wouldn't make that other fund more than 10% of my portfolio, but, of course, it's not my portfolio and only you have to be comfortable enough with your portfolio to be able to hold it through all the inevitable market gyrations you will experience in your investing life.

Regarding currency exposure, non-home market stocks is one of the few practical ways an ordinary person can diversify away from their home currency. Your labor income, your home, your savings, pension credits, and probably every other aspect of your financial life is denominated in your home currency. Having 80-something percent of your stocks diversified into other currencies is, from that point of view, probably not all that much. But again, you have to be happy in your portfolio.
Very helpful answer thanks!

Yeah, the markets are perfectly priced. What do I know more? I get it. Suppose I'm just thinking of rebalancing more to the norm of USD/other currencies and US total stock market cap

Half of my assets are in EUR as I worked there before moving to UK so I'm already partially currency diversified. Suppose higher weight in US gives me more diversification which is good.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by paddyreilly75 »

tubaleiter wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 12:34 am I'm also a UK investor, and I share a lot of your sentiments. The US feels overvalued - but it has felt that way for a long time, and underweighting the US would have cost you a LOT of growth over the last decade or so.

My other problem is that if you underweight the US, you have to overweight something else - which something else is worth overweighting right now? Europe, with Ukraine/energy prices/long term demographic issues? UK, with all that plus Brexit? Japan, with even bigger and nearer-term demographic issues? EM, with lots of governance issues, and the threat that the Chinese government could do something unpleasant? Pacific seems ok, but it's a lot of small markets. Don't forget Canada, but it has a lot in common with Europe.

So I've stuck with market weighting, except a modest bias to the UK (8.2% target instead of the 4.1% market weight). I'm hard-pressed to make a compelling logical argument for that home bias, but it's also small, not likely to move the needle too much if it's a bad call. UK does seem to be long-term undervalued for some strong companies, but also definitely some zombies in there. I can sleep at night with my allocation, so it must be ok!

I don't hedge any currencies, that's even harder to predict than equities. If GBP continues to slide, my non-UK holdings will increase in value when priced in GBP, so offsets that concern. If GBP appreciates, my smaller UK holdings appreciate, as do my cash/bonds in GBP, my salary, etc. I'm not willing to bet against the USD, which is basically what hedging US equities to GBP does.

Practically, your 5 ETF approach works, and it's not that complicated. I do something similar, even a bit more complicated, mostly for historic and tax-optimization reasons (I moved to the UK mid-career, still have some accounts in the US - you don't need to artificially add more complexity). Only note is that you are missing Canada. Whether Canada's 3.1% overall market weight is big enough to worry about or you just skip it is up to you - there are some Canada-only ETFs that you could add to the portfolio to close that gap, at a cost of marginally more complexity.

Other thought is that with 5 funds, it's useful to set some rules around rebalancing, to avoid fiddling because you have a hunch. The rules you set aren't actually that important, just that you stick to something. Keep it simple with annual or quarterly rebalancing, or do a rules-based approach, just pick something.
As I've worked in Europe too and could possibly settle there I'll probably overweight to Europe as well as UK in the way asset_chaos mentioned above to about 10% (which is actually where I was already leaning.

I might also partially hedged the dollar on US exposure which would make it 6 funds

Suppose currency hedging is to reduce volatility which I my case will help me stay the course! Thats why bonds are always hedged in local currency?
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by tre3sori »

The Vanguard paper "The role of home bias in global asset allocation decisions" may be of interest: https://static.vgcontent.info/crp/intl/ ... 9%7C151400
...and the fact that the home biased version of the Vanguard LifeStrategy Funds UK tilt their global portfolios towards UK. Here is a fact sheet: https://www.vanguard.co.uk/content/dam/ ... 2-2022.pdf
This could give some hints at how to lower the weight of US.
The information provided is intended to be entertaining. It is not to be construed as professional advice. Use it at your own risk.
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Anon9001
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by Anon9001 »

paddyreilly75 wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 4:48 pm UK Investor looking to keep it simple with far to much cash and currently dollar cost averaging it in.
Late to investing. Unlike the US, most people in UK are more comfortable putting money into savings accounts and we don't have the same culture of investing from an early age.

Currently. just using a straight up VWRL Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF for SIPP and ISA (both tax free wrappers), which gives worldwide exposure to Large/Medium/Small caps across global equities

Unfortunately this gives 60% weighting to US / USD which is at an all time high against GBP. US stocks are also are really high P/E ratio compared to any other global markets. Obviously S&P 500 companies are more global companies than just US companies.

But take valuations of
- Apple which is now worth more than FTSE 100 index (also containing many non UK based global companies)
- Tesla which is now worth more than all other global car companies combined (Another question about Tesla though would be is it a car or software/robotics/production/battery company?)

Surely US is in dangerous value territory for non USD investor primarily?
I know the time in the market instead of timing the market but its easier to take this when you are US based

I was thinking of buying 5 ETFs to cover

Europe/UK
EM
Japan
Pacific region
and
US but GBP hedged at 50% instead of 60% as I'd be reducing my risk to currency and also have it more rebalanced at a market cap that is pre bubble levels

What do you think?
I would just own EM, US, and possibily 30-40% exposure to UK Mid-Caps (FTSE 250) if you want to have Home Bias. I dont think Jap, Pacific Stocks will add any value to the Portfolio as they will probably have high correlation to US stocks due to them being Multi-National companies which derive sizeable amount of their revenues from outside their Home Country like their US counterparts. EM is different in this aspect as due to it's 32% weightage to China which has unique risks which are not present in other Developed Markets so its probably safe to presume that the correlation between EM and US will be the lowest among Equity Asset Classes.

You can decide the weightage to the three.

Regards,
Anon9001.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by Valuethinker »

paddyreilly75 wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 1:22 am
asset_chaos wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 7:09 pm The typical answer is, what do you know that the totality of all other stock market participants don't. Another type of answer is, sure overweight the UK/Europe if you like. But why be complicated about it? Take the global fund and add one other fund to overweight UK, or underweight US if you like that perspective better. I personally wouldn't make that other fund more than 10% of my portfolio, but, of course, it's not my portfolio and only you have to be comfortable enough with your portfolio to be able to hold it through all the inevitable market gyrations you will experience in your investing life.

Regarding currency exposure, non-home market stocks is one of the few practical ways an ordinary person can diversify away from their home currency. Your labor income, your home, your savings, pension credits, and probably every other aspect of your financial life is denominated in your home currency. Having 80-something percent of your stocks diversified into other currencies is, from that point of view, probably not all that much. But again, you have to be happy in your portfolio.
Very helpful answer thanks!

Yeah, the markets are perfectly priced. What do I know more? I get it. Suppose I'm just thinking of rebalancing more to the norm of USD/other currencies and US total stock market cap

Half of my assets are in EUR as I worked there before moving to UK so I'm already partially currency diversified. Suppose higher weight in US gives me more diversification which is good.
If you just held the FTSE100, something like half of the underlying profits of those companies would be in USD (60-70% are earned outside the UK). Look at some of the big stocks:

- BP - prices in USD (oil and gas). Results published in USD
- Shell - ditto
- British American Tobacco - North America is its largest market, still, I believe
- Diageo (Guinness, Johnnie Walker) - exports a lot to USD sensitive economies such as Emerging Markets
- GSK, Astra Zeneca - US is the world's largest pharmaceutical market
- Rio Tinto, BHP, Glencore - mining companies price in USD, largely. Their costs are mostly in Emerging Market countries

The point? Where a stock is listed doesn't determine where it earns its money. Nestle is Swiss based, but less than 10% (way less) of its sales are in Swiss Francs. Owning Nestle as a Swiss investor is actually a bet *against* the Swiss currency and economy. If the Swiss Franc rises, Nestle's profits are lower.

When the GBP rises, it actually puts *downward* pressure on the profits (and sometimes the share prices) of FTSE100 companies - when sterling devalued after the Brexit vote, you saw markets rise in the next few days.

If you want to play the state of the UK economy, the FTSE 250 (the FTSE100 is 80-85% of the All-Share index by market value, the 250 is the next 10-12%) is much more domestically exposed: housebuilders etc.

Tesla? Half its production is in China.

So:
- don't confuse what a stock is priced in (USD say) with where its main operations and profit centres are. The US Is a huge capitalistic economy, so most multinationals are big in the USA - regardless of where they are listed.

- If you are worried about foreign exchange risk (and to be honest, in the UK, if you have savings in the UK, an income in the UK (or just the State Pension), home equity in the UK - adding more exposure to GBP seems to be redundant), then you buy a currency hedged equity fund.

Most bond funds currency hedge. Most equity funds do not. Falls in global markets in the past year have been partly cushioned for UK investors by falls in sterling.

Regards to calling the US stock market as "overvalued". It's been that way for as long as I can remember. Europe and Japan look cheap, and underperform. Although the US took a real pounding both in the dot com meltdown (2000-03) and the Global Financial Crisis (2008-9 + Eurozone follow on), the US market always seems to bounce back faster.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by pennywiser »

paddyreilly75 wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 4:48 pm US but GBP hedged at 50% instead of 60% as I'd be reducing my risk to currency and also have it more rebalanced at a market cap that is pre bubble levels

What do you think?
I agree with hedging US but disagree with US underweight.
Anyway, give this a watch, it might give you some ideas: https://youtu.be/AVteerV9N7U
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by Anon9001 »

I believe the issue with this concentration into one particular market say USA is that due to it being over-weight on IT stocks relative to ROW the performance of it depends on heavily on the IT's sector performance and the World Index due to it having 60% weightage to US stocks is also dependent on the performance of the IT stocks although to a lesser extent.

Related to this its interesting to me that even though certain people state US is "Diversified" Market the MSCI USA Index is having 27% weightage to IT Sector (Note Amazon, Alphabet, Tesla is not considered IT if they were considered as part of this sector the weightage increases to 34%) whereas the Indian Market which people believe to be "Undiversified" tends to have 35% weightage to Financials Sector. Goes to show that actually every market tends to be concentrated in a particular sector.

Also it would be interesting to see how this Index works out in a worst case scenario for US stocks. A Japanese Style Lost Decades which result in a 30 Year Return of 0% return. I think that if this were to happen this Index would probably do pretty badly on its own but compared to the US Index it would do slightly better assuming the Ex-US stocks don't crash along with which when considering the high correlation between the two might be a unreasonable assumption to make.

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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by pennywiser »

Anon9001 wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 7:57 am relative to ROW
What is ROW?
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by paddyreilly75 »

pennywiser wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 10:15 am
Anon9001 wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 7:57 am relative to ROW
What is ROW?
Rest of World
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by paddyreilly75 »

asset_chaos wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 7:09 pm .

- If you are worried about foreign exchange risk (and to be honest, in the UK, if you have savings in the UK, an income in the UK (or just the State Pension), home equity in the UK - adding more exposure to GBP seems to be redundant), then you buy a currency hedged equity fund.

Regards to calling the US stock market as "overvalued". It's been that way for as long as I can remember. Europe and Japan look cheap, and underperform. Although the US took a real pounding both in the dot com meltdown (2000-03) and the Global Financial Crisis (2008-9 + Eurozone follow on), the US market always seems to bounce back faster.
Really like your logic here

I suppose dca into US/USD global funds over a long period of time will also diminish currency volatility

Already have too high a percentage in GBP EUR and the aim is better diversification so non hedged helps me heres.

Energy prices probably influence GDP as much as any factor and as long as USD has reserve currency status, so always worth owning
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by asset_chaos »

paddyreilly75 wrote: Mon Mar 06, 2023 1:04 pm
asset_chaos wrote: Sun Mar 05, 2023 7:09 pm .

- If you are worried about foreign exchange risk (and to be honest, in the UK, if you have savings in the UK, an income in the UK (or just the State Pension), home equity in the UK - adding more exposure to GBP seems to be redundant), then you buy a currency hedged equity fund.

Regards to calling the US stock market as "overvalued". It's been that way for as long as I can remember. Europe and Japan look cheap, and underperform. Although the US took a real pounding both in the dot com meltdown (2000-03) and the Global Financial Crisis (2008-9 + Eurozone follow on), the US market always seems to bounce back faster.
Really like your logic here

I suppose dca into US/USD global funds over a long period of time will also diminish currency volatility

Already have too high a percentage in GBP EUR and the aim is better diversification so non hedged helps me heres.

Energy prices probably influence GDP as much as any factor and as long as USD has reserve currency status, so always worth owning
While I wrote something similar to the first paragraph, I think you've quoted Valuethinker here.
Regards, | | Guy
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by Anon9001 »

Just to further bolster the point the Global Index is a closet US Index a Scatter Plot of the Monthly Returns of MSCI World USD and MSCI USA USD show that they have a pretty strong correlation (although its not perfect obviously) from 1969-2023.

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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by TedSwippet »

Anon9001 wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 1:04 pm Just to further bolster the point the Global Index is a closet US Index a Scatter Plot of the Monthly Returns of MSCI World USD and MSCI USA USD show that they have a pretty strong correlation ...
Nothing new here. Given that the USA is a large component of the MSCI World index -- and often its largest component -- maths alone make it virtually certain that these two will show a close correlation.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by Anon9001 »

TedSwippet wrote: Tue Mar 07, 2023 1:39 pm Nothing new here. Given that the USA is a large component of the MSCI World index -- and often its largest component -- maths alone make it virtually certain that these two will show a close correlation.
While that might be true for past 20-30 years or so I believed in 80s Japan had the highest weightage in the World Index. US had second highest weightage at the time.

Anyway knowing this strong correlation between the two this does make wonder if say the US market enters into Japan Style Lost Decades where 30 Year Return is 0% how well this World Index will do in that scenario? I suspect most likely it will do better than the US Index but not by any meaningful amount.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by galeno »

100% of our equity exposure is in VWRD. Ocassionally I get tempted to sell 20% and put 10% into WSML and 10% into VDEM.

Then I read my signature.
KISS & STC.
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Re: UK Investor not comfortable with 60% US (USD) in Global Allocation

Post by Anon9001 »

What is interesting is even by themselves both EM and Developed Ex-US Index show a Correlation of 0.66 and 0.77 respectively with the MSCI USA from Dec 1987(This date is chosen because it's the inception date of the EM Index)-2023. Visually though it does seem that the EM Index is much less positively correlated with the US Index. I suspect that EM will probably continue to exhibit lesser correlation with US Index as it is having high weightage in China now which is having unique risks which are not present in other DM's or even other EM's.

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