Starting a thread to talk about ETF based portfolios including short and long term trading ideas.

I personally have a portfolio consisting of almost all ETF's over almost every sector. I'll start by posting what I own and we can jump off from there.

looking forward to this!

I currently own VFV.TO which is the Canadian version of the S&P 500 index, up about 14% in since i bought it late November of 2012. thinking of dumping it soon though because who knows how much gas left this little upswing has.

Also own VEE.TO which is another vanguard fund for emerging markets etf. its supposed to trace the FTSE 100. up about 7% since i bought it in late November also.

anyone have any recommendations for some inverse ETF's?

long SLV

Justine: SPS is a 2x inverse SPX

long DOG & JGBS

So, my portfolio basically breaks down as such, although its a rough scetch:

55% Equity

35% US:

SDY (Dividend S&P 500)
DTD/VIG (Dividend S&P)
SLYG (Small Cap)
SKYY (The Cloud computing industry)

10% Developed Market

EWG (Germany)
EWM (Malaysia)
PXF (Developed markets EX US)

10% Emerging Market Equity

DEM/VWO
EEB (ADR and GDR of emergning market coportations I don't otherwise have exposure to)

Fixed Income 21%

US 15%

TIP (treasury inflation protected)
PFN (Pimco general bond fund)
PFF (preferred corporate bonds)
JNK (High Yield corporate bonds)
FCT (Floating Rates)

International 6%

EMCB (Emerging market corporate bonds)
EU (the Euro Debt Fund)
AUNZ (Aussie/NZ Debt Fund)

Commodities 15%

GLTR (commodity basket)
GLD
PHO (Water)
PXE (Dynamic Energy Exploration & Production)

Real Estate 10%

VNQ (Domestic)
VNQI (international)
ITB (Home builders) * recently sold this, because it felt underweight, replaced it w:

VDC (Consumer Staples)


I also have a small chunk of money to play around with on the side, I'm in APPL for now as of last week, but well see....

Feel free to ask me any questions. I may or may not have a great answer because I'm still learning and adjusting as time goes on.

I'm 38 and single and own my house.

thanks Big, are all inverse etfs leveraged though? I also heard to not stay in them for a long time as they have high re-balancing costs.

Heres a good article on inverse ETFs

http://www.investopedia.com/articles...#axzz2NOlzxWvf

Not sure if it says in the article but i read somewhere else that liquidity can be a problem with these.

DOG and JGBS are both unleveraged inverse

Inverse also has high costs, not just leveraged. Just look at a long term chart of any inverse and or leveraged etf

For those of you who use Fidelity, they changed their commission-free ETF selection. They removed some and added many more. They now have 65 in total. Though there are short term trading fees.

Being Canadian, I just discovered morningtar for comparing them. My god I could spend hours on that site.

VTI FTW!

/thread

great site eh!

VTI is great ofc, but don't you want to have some international exposure?

how did you decide upon this allocation?

VTI is my favorite ETF, not my only ETF.

VWO is great for emerging markets.

VEU/VEA depending on tax deferred account or not is great too.

Can someone tell me why I shouldn't invest a large portion of my IRA in small cap? Fidelity smallcap discovery and others got smashed by the recession and still have an avg annualized return of ~14% over the past 10 years. That doesn't seem as risky to me as I'm led to believe.

Yeah, Ive been wondering this too. SLYG is by far my biggest winner, it definitely swings bigger, but who cares if you're in long term.

Well, basically from what I understand, it's a weird time to invest. I was shooting for something a little more conservative, with less overall equity, but, it was hard to find other safe plays than equities with Bonds being as they are right now. With the European established markets and the EURO being in such doubt, it made it even harder to diversify.

My starting off point was a basic:

30% US equities
20% International equities
20% Fixed Income
15% Commodities
15% Real Estate

Then from there I kind of looked at how everything was doing currently, and decided how comfortable I was in terms of aggression. At my age I can be a little more aggressive in equities anyway. I wanted to have more fixed income that wasn't corporate, but investing in US Bonds and most municipal bonds right now is out of the question, so most of my fixed income was an audible. I went with JNK, PFF, etc. I tried to add some international corporate bonds so at least I was diversified in that way. There I went with EMCB (Emerging Market Corporate Bonds) and AUNZ which is an Australia/NZ debt fund.

I'll re balance every year or maybe less and continue to contribute to the IRA. Having more than one holding in each sector should make it a little more flexible when it comes time to re balance and take losses and gains with taxes too.

It being an all ETF portfolio, I've maintained as much liquidity and wiggle room as possible. I'll be able to move things easily and change allocation when it's called for. I've also minimized fees as low as possible, by getting 30 free trades a month with Merrill.

My goal was to minimize fees as much as possible, take advantage of every tax benefit, all while maintaining as much diversification as possible within reason. Once, I found the different sectors to put my money in, and tried to diversify and try to make tiny plays within each sector. I have almost all of the dividend funds in my IRA. This way I can just re-invest those automatically and let them grow tax free.

Hard time to find an easy play though. GLD had been on a heater for a while, although it's been down since I bought it, which is exactly my point. I'm kind of waiting for the stock market to have it's correction as well. But where else would I have put the money? Sitting out even longer really isn't an option. Gotta just jump in and go with it long term, but it would have been a lot easier to start this process 3 years ago, that's for sure.

The only buy low option right now is in Europe and I just don't feel great about it right now. Maybe in a year or so when the signs start point up. That's why I went with Germany, Canada, Malaysia and the Euro Debt Fund which is a somewhat safer way to play it. I've thought about getting into VEU as kind of a buy low type situation, but I'm going to see how the year plays out.

I've also thought about getting into Brasil and maybe out of Canada since it's so closely tied to our economy. At the time I liked the conservative nature of that, but now it's seems a bit pointless.

As long as you're comfortable with the risk. For my domestic allocation, I go 80% Total Market and 10% Russell 2000 and 10% Russell Microcap (IWC). Small caps will get crushed during downturns, but should exceed the market during upswings. There are more ups than downs (normally). However, if you are uncomfortable with volatility or are getting closer to retirement, you might want to scale back small cap exposure.

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Easily the best website for ETF info

http://etfdb.com/


Chock full of information
.

For those of you in NY state, I have a chunk of ENX. Someone has been puking it the last couple weeks and its trading 4-5% discount to NAV (its net asset value, the sum of all the things it owns). Its not super liquid so sometimes there are meaningful dislocations vs its NAV. Follow this link: http://cef.morningstar.com/quote?t=ENX and click on the 1 year chart and you can see the plot of price vs NAV.

It yields around 5% tax free. Big risk obviously are rates going higher... A lot of the bonds it owns are longer term.

So did it late, but I got into XHB today (housing)

ZGI.TO also, which is a Canadian one for global infrastructure.

Watching for a dip in XLF

Typed this out for someone else, figured I'd bump this for a reset. I'm in or just closed:

XLF (financial), XLV (healthcare), XLP (consumer staples), ZGI (global infrastructure), XHB (home builders).


Using GLD, SLV and CGL for my commodities.

Keeping a close eye on:

VNQI (global real estate)
SPLV (S&P 500 low vol)
XLE (energy select)
DTD (wisdom trust total dividend)
DTN (dividend ex-FINL)

I'm in DTD and VNQI.

Why did you decide to go with the X Etf's as opposed to the Vanguard ones?

I just sold my position in ITB (home builders) because it seemed like it was going to be hard to make money since it had already been up like over 20% when I bought it.