Today’s chart was a quick visual reminder to me on how the world has changed since 1987 – namely, how it has become significantly more American and significantly less Japanese. The source is a FTSE Russell paper titled “Indexing The World”, which index geeks like me would consider required reading for understanding the difference between […]
While there is a lot of merit to simply investing in a broadly diversified portfolio of low cost index funds, market cap weighted index funds have some features (or flaws, depending how you see it) that drive me to alternatives. One key example is this recent WSJ story highlighting how US index funds are about […]
MSCI’s China A-share inclusion is one of the many themes I’ve been hearing over and over again this year. As one of the world’s largest and most respected brands in benchmarking investment portfolios, this move means that trillions of dollars of American and European retirement funds will now be required to buy more Chinese stocks, […]
“Buy a low cost, passive index fund, and hold it for the long term” is probably one of the most mainstream pieces of investment advice circulating over the past 40 years. While I agree this is a better solution for most busy investors than the high overhead, high fee, and high turnover investment products that […]
Last month, the Hang Seng index made the historic move of replacing Cathay Pacific with a mainland Chinese company, as part of the longer-term trend of Greater China integration in the index. At that time, I pointed out that Singapore Airlines’s position in the Straits Times index was far more secure, but today we see […]
Investors looking to replace index ETFs or more expensive stock mutual funds or closed-end funds with direct positions in blue chip stocks may want to start by owning some of the largest companies in the world by market cap. Market cap is simply the total value of shares outstanding, and most index funds and ETFs […]
For ease of reference, here are links to the dividend data of the 50 components of the Hang Seng Index, based on their end of June weights in the TraHK Tracker Fund of Hong Kong (2800.HK): Ticker Name Hang Seng Weight 5.HK HSBC Holdings 10.6051 700.HK Tencent Holdings (P Chip) 10.3959 1299.HK AIA Group Ltd. […]
Last Friday the South China Morning Post reported that the Hang Seng Index would make at least two replacements on March 6: dropping HK garment trader Li & Fung (0494.HK) and mainland beer maker Tsingdao Brewery (0168.HK) and adding Chinese carmaker Geely Auto (0175.HK) and the Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC = 1658.HK). Li & […]
Hong Kong still has a “board lot” requirement that shares of stocks, ETFs, and other HKEX exchange-traded securities still be traded in minimum chunks that can range from 10 to thousands of shares per trade. As a reference, below are a list of HKEX-listed ETFs with useful information like expense ratio, board lot size, and […]
This is an summary and excerpt of my article “Why I Wouldn’t Invest More Than $100,000 In An S&P 500 ETF Or Index Fund“. Ask 100 fee-only financial advisors how they would invest an extra $100,000 that was not needed for at least 10 years, and odds are that one of the top responses would […]