Am I an anomaly amongst Singapore investors?

The weirdness of the SGX survey

Last month, I received an email from SGX. I was asked to participate in a survey by them, and I would win a prize if I was lucky. The survey took no more than 5 minutes, and I answered the questions as accurately as possible.

Many questions were asked, and mostly geared towards asking how often I trade, and what is the reason for trading? These were also the questions that I couldn't answer, because I only buy, and never sell my investments.

I could have answered this particular question a little differently from others

Towards the middle of the survey, there was this question asked. It asked where were my shares held in. This was my reply:
I was telling the truth. I really do own shares from all over the world. As long as there is stock, you would be sure that I own it.

The Singapore 3-fund Portfolio is truly diversified

I do it because of the Singapore 3-fund Portfolio. In the portfolio, I hold 40% of my portfolio in the Vanguard All-World UCITS ETF. The other two funds are the SPDR STI ETF and the Singapore ABF Bond ETF.

The Vanguard All-World UCITS is truly global, holding 2,996 (as of 31 August 2016) in 47 regions.  Just see this list of countries that the fund has ownership in (from: link). Yes, it is a really long list.

The beauty of the Singapore 3-fund Portfolio

It is simple and fuss-free. Instead of trying to select stocks, we buy all possible stocks there are. In the end, we get the market return instead of trying to beat the market and end up making losses and lower returns than if we would have if we just bought the market itself.

In the long run, an index will always rise. We would be much safer if we dollar cost average into an investment that would never go bankrupt. Even the wealthy can lose their money if they don't diversify.
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4 comments

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24 September 2016 at 10:23 delete

what is the ER of this vanguard ETF?

any particular reason why this etf and not the IWDA?

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caifanman
AUTHOR
24 September 2016 at 17:04 delete

Hi Foolish Chameleon,

To be honest I didn't check out IWDA before. I just went to check and the IWDA holds 1,608 stocks compared to 2,966 by the VWRD.

I have written a post on the number of stocks for diversification to be effective. But both ETF should be fine. This is the link: https://lazysingaporean.blogspot.sg/2016/02/30-stocks-is-not-all-you-need-for.html

The ER of VWRD is 0.25% which is higher than that of the IWDA at 0.20%.

Considering that, the IWDA should be also okay. Both are fine for me.

Something interesting is that the returns for the IWDA is always higher than the VWRD, by more than 0.05% (the difference in ER). It could be due to tracking error as VWRD does hold more stocks than IWDA. This difference might reverse in the future, but the difference is slight in any way.

Lazy Singaporean

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24 September 2016 at 18:20 delete

hi LS,

i think thats partly due to the dividends being reinvested in IWDA.
i havent got the chance to look in VWRD yet

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caifanman
AUTHOR
25 September 2016 at 01:14 delete

Hi Foolish Chameleon,

Yes, it could also be the case.
The dividends reinvested automatically definitely makes a difference.

Lazy Singaporean

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