Consolidating my portfolio and diversifying

Been busy recently, and trying to start an Amazon ecommerce business as a sideline to provide additional cashflow (as well as doing some additional due diligence in reading materials related to it). Haven't had much time to work on my watchlist as well.

 

Finally got to combining my US and SG portfolio together, and thus will track something like the FTSE All-World Index funds for a better comparison.


On a side note, I have achieved a total portfolio size of 50k now. Still relatively small but at least it is a milestone :)

As portfolio gets bigger (pity my income doesn't grow as fast), now I can add some diversification to it, in addition, I doubt I'll be able to analyse companies overseas easily, as well as my main priority is more of an income investing strategy, so I figured that index ETFs or similar are the way to go for me.

Read Turtleinvestor (here) and My15WWW (here) posts, decided to get Ireland-domiciled ETFs (using Standard Chartered Brokerage) as well as Berkshire Hathaway is a nice proxy to the US market (kinda like an ETF).


However, with the current small size, BRK-B (US) will do for now. 

Perhaps in the future, I can look at VEUD (Developed Europe ETF) as well as VDEM (Emerging Market ETF as well as access to China, without having expensive management fees). It will kinda create an All-World ETF (as it is mostly US, then Europe, then Japan, and other countries in small proportions).

I skipped Japan as I'm not exactly upbeat on their performance and unsure of their ability to turn around. If they turn around, I could look at grabbing an ETF on it.

Maybe I might get the ABF Bond ETF one day (or just SSB?).

Accumulation wise, BRK-B will be based on book value, it is not as precise but relatively simple enough for me (there's many articles out there that would provide you with the more chim methods of valuing it).
I have yet to decide how will I accumulate the other ETFs, perhaps using PB valuation ranges.


In addition, I would believe that most of my holdings will be in CDP, followed by TD Ameritrade and lastly StandChart. I do realise that in US, most holdings are done via custodians but I kinda trust TD Ameritrade more (they have a maximum claim dictated by SIPC of US$500k, plus additional coverage totaling to US$152M in case of brokerage insolvency) than StandChart (I don't see any protection at all).


And once I have sufficient size to add the other 2 ETFs to further diversify, I'll will terminate my Manulife ILP (as previously I couldn't find other means of diversification which fit my budget and profile).

Well, that's all for now!