Build the Global Market Portfolio With ETFs

What is the Global Market portfolio?

The Global Market Portfolios can be built with 10-15 ETFs. They are exposed to 70% equities and 30% bonds.

What is the historical return for The Global Portfolios?

Below you can see the historical return of the global market portfolios.

Portfolio data was last updated on 11th of August 2023, 08:35 ET

Here is what the table is showing you

Year to date: This shows what the portfolio has returned this year starting from the first trading day of the year.

10 Year return: This shows the compounded annualized growth rate over a ten-year period. The current year is excluded from calculations.

CAGR since 1989: This shows the compounded annualized growth rate since 1989. The current year is excluded from calculations.

Expense ratio: This shows the cost of holding the portfolio if you were to construct the portfolio using the proposed ETFs.

Yield: This is the expected dividend yield of the portfolio.

Please note that past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.

How do the Global Market portfolios compare to the best portfolios?

Below you can see the returns of the best portfolios that we have benchmarked.

What is the Global Market portfolio?

The Global Market portfolio is the weighted sum of every asset in the world.

This definition includes:

• All publically tradeable stocks from all countries.
• All privately held stock from all countries including think start-ups, private equity.
• All types of corporate bonds from all countries.
• All types of government bonds from all countries.
• All types of real estate from all countries.
• Land ownership from all countries including timber and grasslands.

This sounds easy enough but it becomes difficult to contain that definition when reality hits.

How finely granular do we measure assets?

Here are a few questions to put this difficult task into perspective.

• What constitutes assets in the first place?
• Does it include intangibles like trademarks?
• Does it only include investable assets? What does that even mean?
• Does it include private equity as well?
• Does it include human capital?

What is the return of Earth?*

No matter how you look at making a Global Market portfolio you need to set up boundaries of what you include and what you exclude from the Global Market portfolio.

However, it is a market portfolio so the assets in the portfolio need to be accessible on some market.

We could hand over the definition to a certified accountant. They usually have a knack for cutting out the fluff with a clean cut. Maybe an accountant would say that anything that can generate a return and can be bought and sold should be considered into the Global Market portfolio. But not everything that can generate a return can be bought and sold and not everything that can be bought and sold generates a return!

Why not just invest along the weightings of the global market-cap-weighted portfolio? The main difficulty of this is that it is hard to determine exactly what the exact weightings are, but a number of researchers have come pretty close with a ballpark estimate.

The accountants’ version of how to construct a Global Market portfolio is probably as close as we are going to get a picture of what a Global Market Portfolio looks like. If it were just a Global Portfolio a better way would be to put a price on the entire globe. On the entire Earth.

Let’s imagine a galactic civilization. This civilization of space-faring aliens trades planets like stocks just like we share companies’ stock. Each planet is an asset that hopefully generates a return. How much would the Earth be worth? How much would Earth be worth in the future?

We’ll back off from discussing what return means in the context of galactic aliens because that is an entirely new and abstract discussion.

The Global Market portfolio changes over time as illustrated below.

Let’s get practical now and see some actual portfolios.

Description of the Global Market portfolio

The 2008 book The Intelligent Portfolio: Practical Wisdom on Personal Investing from Financial Engines by Christopher L. Jones presents a Global Market portfolio.

Financial Engines is now called Edelman Financial Engines. It has $200 billion under management (2020).

Christopher L. Jones is the CIO at Financial Engines.

The portfolio presented is from the vantage point of a U.S.-based investor. This means that the U.S. portion of assets is much more broken down. It has small-caps and mid-cap caps for example. For international assets, they are lumped into a few categories like Europe and the Pacific.

The Global Market portfolio from Credit Suisse is more condensed. It is presented in Meb Faber’s book Global Asset Allocation: A Survey of the World’s Top Asset Allocation Strategies.

Meb Faber uses Credit Suisse’s, Global Wealth Databook 2014 as his source.

What is the asset allocation for the Global Market portfolio?

Below you can see the asset allocation for the global portfolios.

The Global Market Portfolio, (“GMP”) Credit Suisse

• 20.00% US Large Cap Blend (VOO)
• 5.00% REITs (VNQ)
• 5.00% Emerging Markets (VWO)
• 15.00% International ALL-World EX-US (VEU)
• 15.00% Long-Term Treasuries (TLT)
• 22.00% Corporate Bonds (LQD)
• 2.00% TIPS (VTIP)
• 16.00% International Bonds (BNDX)

The Global Market Portfolio, Financial Engines

• 13.00% US Large Cap Value (VTV)
• 13.10% US Large Cap Growth (VUG)
• 3.70% US Mid Cap Value (JKI)
• 3.70% US Mid Cap Growth (IJK)
• 1.80% US Small Cap Value (VIOV)
• 1.80% US Small Cap Growth (IJT)
• 2.40% Emerging Markets (VWO)
• 8.10% Pacific Stocks (VPL)
• 15.80% European Stocks (VGK)
• 1.10% Long-Term Treasuries (TLT)
• 5.30% Intermediate-Term Treasuries (VGIT)
• 6.20% Total US Bond Market (BND)
• 2.60% Cash (money market fund) (BIL)
• 3.40% Corporate Bonds (LQD)
• 18.00% Non-US Bonds (BNDX)

Make sure you select the right ETFs!

There are a lot of ETFs! It is pretty boring to sift through hundreds and hundreds of ETFs just to find the right one, but it is worth it!

Finding the right and BEST ETF could earn you a lot more money than number two on the list.

We have done the work for you – all for FREE.

We have carefully selected ETFs for each asset class that the portfolios on portfolioeinstein.com use. If you want to read more about our selection process and see what we consider the best ETFs please visit our article What Is The Best ETF?

If you are a European investor you need to buy European ETFs (they need to be of the UCITS kind!).

We have listed 47 of the best ETFs in our article What Are The Best ETFs For European Investors? (Here Is 47).

As of 2021 we also track socially responsible investing ESG portfolios. Socially responsible investing (ESG) portfolios prioritize investing that puts an emphasis on environmental, social, and corporate governance issues.

You can find the socially responsible investing ESG ETFs in the same article.

Where can I learn more about Global Market portfolio?

Read about global allocation from Meb Faber’s excellent book Global Asset Allocation: A Survey of the World’s Top Asset Allocation Strategies.

Get can get a primer on what a Global Market portfolio is from the paper Historical Returns of the Market Portfolio.

Find out how to predict future returns (I’d like to do that!) in the book The Intelligent Portfolio: Practical Wisdom on Personal Investing from Financial Engines.

If you want to really impress your clients, friends, and family you should pick up the fabulous Triumph of the Optimists: 101 Years of Global Investment Returns..

It is a beautiful and fascinating dictionary-like tome. It contains historical investment returns for almost all countries of the world. It is updated each year by Credit Suisse.

Suggestions for your next steps

If you have already committed to a portfolio then maybe you need help maintaining the portfolio. In this case you will find our rebalance worksheet useful.

Rebalancing your portfolio lowers your risk and may provide higher returns in the long run. It is completely FREE.

You can find the rebalance worksheet in our article Here Is The Most Easy To Use Portfolio Rebalance Tool.

Related questions

How much of a portfolio should be international?

Approximate 45% of all the world’s stocks are international. The USA stock market accounts for 55% of all the world’s stock capitalization.

Should I own international stocks?

Yes, you should at least have 10-20% international stocks.

However, John Bogle founder of Vanguard noted that about 30% of revenue from American companies is collected from overseas trade. John Bogle hereby suggested that you are diversified internationally if you hold American companies.

What are the types of portfolio investment (asset classes)?

The most important types of portfolio investments are:

1. stocks
2. bonds
3. REITs. Your portfolio typically contains more stocks than bonds.