Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Tyler9000 wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 20, 2017 6:12 pm

So I wrote a long post, thought better of it, and decided to go the PM route for now. Sometimes my excitement outpaces my rational side. I'm sure I'll post it again sometime soon.

No more false starts this time -- it's a done deal. I finally updated the site to study portfolios not only for US investors but also for Australia, Canada, Germany, and the UK. It was a ton of work to get there, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

https://portfoliocharts.com/2017/04/29/ ... ng-global/

Now maybe I'll have time to actually study international portfolios rather than just hunting down data.

Thank you!

Tyler, just when I think your site can't get any better.

Some quick bond-related questions. Will "international bonds" make its way back on there as an asset class? What about emerging market debt? Do all the asset classes become country-specific when you switch (gov't LTT, reits, etc. are for the selected country)?

Thanks.

Tyler, this is literally awesome. Chapeau!

ThisDinosaur wrote: ↑

Wed May 03, 2017 6:29 am

Some quick bond-related questions. Will "international bonds" make its way back on there as an asset class? What about emerging market debt? Do all the asset classes become country-specific when you switch (gov't LTT, reits, etc. are for the selected country)?

The trick with international bonds is that most index funds tend to be hedged. That makes modeling them a lot more complicated, and I decided to save that for a future project.

International stocks, commodities, and gold are all universal and are simply translated to local currency. Domestic stocks, bonds, and cash are country specific. So if you're studying the UK, for example, they represent UK stocks, UK gilt funds, and UK Tbills. And all returns account for local inflation.

Thanks Tyler. Best portfolio tool I've seen. I'm always positively surprised at the impact of adding gold to the mix.

Outstanding effort, thanks Tyler.

@Tyler9000 - Are you sure about those currency/hedging assertions?

It was my impression that international numbers (data) are of course in the local currency, but if you buy funds (in the US) that cover international securities, these funds mostly do not hedge the currency exposure unless explicitly stated(*). Consequently, this means international investing is often more a short-USD play than anything else.

(*) IIRC(?!) most funds don't. Managed funds may switch it on and off depending on where they think the USD is going.

The Vanguard international bond fund prospectus does specifically say it is hedged.

"The fund will attempt to hedge its foreign currency exposure, primarily through the use foreign currency exchange forward contracts, in order to correlate to the returns of the index, which is US Dollar hedged."

@Jacob -- Yeah, I phrased that really poorly. You're absolutely correct that most index funds are unhedged, and the calculators are built around that assumption. I should have said this:

The trick with international bonds is that many of the most popular international bond index funds are hedged.

For example, note that Vanguard doesn't even offer an unhedged option.

...

@Tyler, can the Portfolio Charts super fans get an update on the state of the site? Do you see it as being in "set it and forget it mode" now that you have a new part time job? Are you getting offers to buy it? Have the Bogleheads and MMM'ers started a petition yet to make you remove any portfolios that include gold?

Smashter wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 18, 2017 7:43 am

@Tyler, can the Portfolio Charts super fans get an update on the state of the site? Do you see it as being in "set it and forget it mode" now that you have a new part time job? Are you getting offers to buy it? Have the Bogleheads and MMM'ers started a petition yet to make you remove any portfolios that include gold?

Thanks for checking in!

Yeah, I've been taking a bit of a hiatus from writing new articles while I have some other things going on, but it's not in full "set it and forget it mode" by any means. I designed it from the start to be a little more tool than blog so that I could avoid getting caught in the publish or perish loop, and I guess I've just been taking advantage of that lately. I do have a few post ideas and also some new international data to play with, and I imagine I'll update things soon. Any special requests?

No purchase offers yet. Maybe I'll get there some day. And when it comes to gold, I've learned to enjoy being the bad guy who supports it with, like, data and stuff.

But it has no real returns and you can't eat it!!!

No special requests. I look forward to reading whatever you post as you get around to it.

Tyler9000 wrote: ↑

Tue Feb 07, 2017 12:59 pm

Fish wrote: I'd like to suggest an all-cash portfolio...

I'll have to think about how to message it, but I like the idea.

I discovered your blog post on cash when Rocky mentioned it in his journal.

Thanks for taking the time to write that. For me the most interesting and counter-intuitive part was learning that cash (in a savings account, not under a mattress) historically could sustain a 30-year retirement at a 4% SWR, though with guaranteed capital depletion. This result seems very unlikely under current conditions, but it is helpful context to augment my personal experience with money, which starts in the mid-2000s.

Yeah, cash is one of those things that I think people who grew up with today's very low rates really have no historical context for. I wouldn't count on exclusively using it for a 4% SWR today, but I also wouldn't assume it always returns next to nothing. It's a lot more dynamic than most people realize.

Hi Tyler, pardon me if this has been asked or previously clarified.

In the calculators, if I change my country of choice to, for example, Canada and then set my portfolio weightings does the World option now include the U.S? My goal here is to run the calculators using my split of Canada / World (incl. USA) 30/70. I'm concerned that I do not have a way to reflect the U.S holdings as the calculators show ex-US on the world option.

Or does using the North America part of the calculator essentially give me U.S holdings? Logic being that the U.S would dominate Canada/Mexico by sheer economy size anyhow.

Thanks.

Edit: Never-mind found the dropdown where I can choose if World includes U.S or not.

No worries! I'm glad you found the setting.

For the benefit of others who may have the same question -- the default setting is ex-US, but do you see that black box in the bottom right that says "xUS"? Click that, and select "ALL" from the dropdown. That will convert the World options to truly global versions including US stocks.

"North America" in the calculators includes data from the US + Canada. But Canada only represents about 7% of that group by market cap, so it is definitely dominated by US stocks.

@T9000--Did you change the Golden Butterfly allocation? I thought it was LCB not TDM. Did I miss a post?

I changed a few portfolios to reference TDM instead of LCB back when I started adding other countries to the calculators simply to make it a little more obvious for non-US investors how to translate portfolio ideas to other countries. But the underlying idea has not changed, and practically speaking TDM and LCB should be interchangeable with very little impact on the final performance.

BTW, any ERE fans outside of the US might want to check out the latest site update: https://portfoliocharts.com/2017/10/16/ ... new-light/