What ETFs do you currently hold?

sabretoothtigger

XASX- DB X FTSE ALL-SHARE ETF
XWXU - DB X-TRACKERS FTSE ALL-WORLD EX UK ETF
ISP6 - ISHARES III PLC S&P SMALLCAP 600 USD(GBP)

Too much america in there I reckon. all share is basically the ftse100 with some sauce, better but not much

anything global is america with some sauce because its size weighted and not much out weighs 325bn of Exxon and so on


theres been some good previous threads on etf

You could buy whichever etf was cheap that month, balance it out over a year

ozzage

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Too much america in there I reckon. all share is basically the ftse100 with some sauce, better but not much

anything global is america with some sauce because its size weighted and not much out weighs 325bn of Exxon and so on

theres been some good previous threads on etf

You could buy whichever etf was cheap that month, balance it out over a year

Thanks for the feedback. XWXU is 44% US so you're pretty spot on with that comment.

According to the Morningstar X-ray tool I have about 25% US which isn't too bad, IMHO. I think the US will do well going forwards and I've spread it between large/mid caps (US component of XWXU) and small-caps (ISP6)

I have a similar % (bit less) of UK and a bit less again from the euro zone. Then Asia and Latin America mostly. I have about 25% emerging markets (spread over Europe, Asia, Americas) which is quite high but I'm comfortable with it.

I have tried to include some small-caps from the major markets as I think there is big growth potential there and in fact they've done very well so far this year. Hence the ISP6, ISFE, DJSC.

Any other comments/feedback much appreciated.

ozzage

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

You could buy whichever etf was cheap that month, balance it out over a year

I considered doing something like this but it makes it more complicated to keep the asset allocation right. This way I can just figure out how much I have to spend each time (ie each three months), split the figure by my percentages for each and go ahead and buy.

The other way, if for some reason I'm lacking funds in a particular month then I can't buy the right amount and my allocation will end up all over the place.

sabretoothtigger

Put performance first, personally I think a good plan beforehand is great but stopping yourself trading because its not perfect is going to miss out on some opportunities

Have you not heard of that trial where they put a monkey with a dart board against a man whose spent 30 years trading stocks, the monkey wins and its not a joke.
Last november a cat choose some ftse100 stocks, he got 30% return and the stockbroker got like 5% I think it was.
Messy is fine if you have the flair for it, otherwise computers would beat all of us


Heres an article on best performing asset classes this year




http://blog.afraidtotrade.com/intermarket-returns-ytd-plus-comparison-graphs/






I put the answer in the stockmarket thread somewhere or work it out yourself, but the original article - Etf often come in and our of favour just like stocks so it compares imo


http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/markets/article.html?in_article_id=456989&in_page_id=3

ozzage

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

Put performance first, personally I think a good plan beforehand is great but stopping yourself trading because its not perfect is going to miss out on some opportunities

Fair enough, but I'm not sure that only trading every three months is "stopping myself trading". It's just controlling costs. Besides, I'm not trading I'm investing Every three months over twenty years doesn't sound too bad to me.

Picking what I buy month by month based on what is cheap at the time sounds dangerously like market timing to me. I'm not really interested in that - just stick to my asset allocation, keep buying regularly and when I'm older I'll be rich. This is the plan :P I might tweak allocations over time but I wouldn't expect to do that more than once every couple of years.

I'm definitely not a stock picker so I'm not sure that the rest is really relevant. I take a broad position on various things (weighting of regions, for example) but in general I have a super-passive approach based solely on index trackers. I almost bought some other shares a while ago but then asked myself "is this really my strategy?" The answer was No so I didn't buy them. Would they be up now? Yes! But do I regret it? No! Better to stick with my plan.

I have a small "play" component in my portfolio for fun, which is were SHIP and INRG have come from. It's not much though and still only for ETFs really.

I DO monitor the 200 day averages and if in a couple of years I see signs that everything is going under then I plan to pull a lot out into cash... I would like to avoid any big crashes even at the expense of some growth. Wouldn't we all

tradetime

tradetime wrote: »

RJA: Rogers International Agriculture
RJZ: Rogers International Metals
DBA: Powershares Agriculture
DBC: Powershares Commodity Index
SLV: iShares Silver Trust
XUKS: DB FTSE100 short :eek:

Added SDS ProShares Ultrashort S&P500 to my holdings as of Thursday 13th (Non ISA)
..oh and added to my existing XUKS position (S&S ISA)

sabretoothtigger

ultrashort, your confident! Looks like good timing so far but there was that unstoppable rise at the end of trading also yesterday. I think its money from japan, their currency rate goes down at the same time
will you daytrade it mostly?

tradetime

sabretoothtigger wrote: »

ultrashort, your confident! Looks like good timing so far but there was that unstoppable rise at the end of trading also yesterday. I think its money from japan, their currency rate goes down at the same time
will you daytrade it mostly?

Yes I was long futures for that ride into the close, was just a game of chicken between new long players and new short players really, who was prepared to hold to the close, shorts covered.
Nah that position won't be a daytrade, but a swing, duration as yet uncertain. I fully expect the position to move against me in the short term, as my expected level of 1048 remains untested as yet.. So I will look to scale into a position over the next few weeks. The major problem with using leveraged etf's apart from the obvious need to be directionally correct is the time decay they suffer, it is worth noting the last time SDS traded at this price the S&P was at about 1470 back in Dec '07. Scaling into a position will to some extent dilute the decay, just as it averages the purchase price down, at the same time I will sell put options at strikes I am prepared to add, and will probably sell OTM calls against the holding also