Post your NISA holdings/results

[robster]

Why so few Vanguard purchases?

In preparing to start investing next year, my research seems to keep pointing to the conclusion that, especially for inexperienced beginners like me, Vanguard Index funds are the best thing since sliced bread, because of the extremely low expense ratios, and the superior expertise/experience Vanguard have in managing index funds. I was beginning to think they were a no-brainer ... until i saw plenty of Nisa show-and-tell posts with little or no Vanguard in them.
The good results show that for this year your selections seem to have been the right ones... but i would really like to hear some of the reasons for buying shares other than Vanguard. Rezz, Tony, Mytime in particular.

Thanks for sharing!

[RetireJapan]

Vanguard basically invented the index fund, and their corporate structure means that they are effectively owned by their customers. They've been a huge driver of beneficial changes for consumers.

However, their index funds aren't necessarily 'better' than others.

Especially in Japan, the hassle of buying in dollars, paying US withholding taxes, and taking on exchange rate risk means that Japanese funds might be better for some people (particularly for non-US shares -to avoid the withholding tax).

[Tony]

Robster,

A lot of what you read is written by Americans, for Americans, where Vanguard is a great choice. But as RetireJapan said, it's not as if they're index funds are the be all and end all.

An index fund tracks an index, the Vanguard 500 fund (VOO) tracks the S&P 500 index buy holding stocks of the companies that make up the S&P 500 index in their respective percentages. This is a passive fund, and requires no active management on Vangaurds side. They probably have software that does the buying and selling for them to track the index, this means that just about any fund tracking the S&P 500 is going to be about the same. The difference will be expense ratios, and vanguard has historically had extremely low expense ratios, which is why they're great ... if you are in America.

Living in Japan, and likely retiring here (almost 0% chance of retiring in the US as I'm not American), means I would like a Japan domiciled fund. This removes the currency risk of holding USD assets, it removes the currency conversion cost for buying in USD, it let's me trade real time (when buying ETFs, so I don't have to wait for the NYSE to open), and I don't have to pay a witholding tax.

[MyTime]

Yep. My reasons for choosing Japanese funds over Vanguard are the same as what RJ and Tony posted--especially in the final paragraphs in each of their posts --nothing else to add really.

[Zoomtokyo]

From a forum newbie:
MUFG (yeah, I know). Set up 2 years ago, and now with about 500,000 of tax-free allotment still unused.
Giving about 30% return overall. All funds in the positive

-Nikkei225 index fund, which has returned 50%!
-Topix index fund
-Dow index fund, around 30% ROI, (no currency hedge and bought when yen was weak).
-Japan small companies equity fund (日本新世紀)
-Emaxis emerging economies bond index fund
-積み立て:Dow index fund, currency hedged, 20,000 yen a month
AND
-Emaxis All country global equity index (Bought yesterday to help complete tax-free allotment)
-Today may buy all-country/global bond fund.

Fire away!

[Akatani]

This was my first year in NISA. So just as I was getting ready to invest in it, there was a discussion on here about where dividends go, and I thought that a mutual fund would be smarter since the dividends get reinvested. I had been planning on 1550 but figured reinvesting the dividends in a taxable account would incur the purchase fees. It was just after I had found two years worth of dividends in my sbi cash account (I had assumed they were being reinvested automatically :facepalm: ) so I wasn't excited about dividends I had to manage. So I watched the mitsui fund for a week or two and bought in on a dip. I found out later that they don't pay out dividends. :facepalm: but that fund goes up quicker than 1550 so it wasn't for naught. I think I had some extra cash in the SBI account so I added an extra 11,794yen to the mutual fund a week later.

三井住友・DCつみたてNISA・全海外株インデックスファンド　800,000yen then 11,794yen up 12.59%

Then, in August with the North Korean fiasco bringing stuff down I bought the following:
1343 30 shares. down 0.67%
1348 140 shares. up 15.06%
1550 50 shares up. 11.06%
etf total: up 11.73%

total gain for the year: 147,741 plus a little in dividends

AA= international stocks ex japan (I forget if the mitsui mutual fund is ex japan or not) originally 76%, now 76.55%
japan stocks originally 19%, now 19.52%
jreit originally 4.4%, now 3.95%

No bonds for me, I'm keeping cash instead.

[Dan]

Hi ZoomTokyo,

Interesting that you have invested in the 日本新世紀 fund. Is the fund’s full name the 日本株セレクトオープン, which offers exposure to five Japanese equity funds run by Mitsubishi’s asset management arm? The expense ratio of 1.5 percent seems a bit steep?

My NISA holdings are mostly in individual Japanese stocks as well as the Hifumi Plus Fund, a Japanese equity fund managed by an independent fund house. If the market goes down and the yen strengthens against other currencies I might invest a larger share in foreign index funds in the future.

[sutebayashi]

Me three. Unfortunately mine wasn't a fund but an etf, meaning I couldn't put in a purchase order until my units had been sold because then I would be selling to myself, which is illegal.

I've done that several times. Easy mistake to make!

This is interesting. I am using Monex but never made this mistake. Monex makes you ‘login’ to the NISA account separately, so it kind of is second nature to me. (But then I typically am only investing with my NISA account.)

Perhaps those suffering this problem are using other brokers?

Edit: to add that myself I find I have been using NISA for multiple years already. Time flies. Initially I bought only mutual funds but sold some for equivalent ETFs after building my account for a while, with unused NISA allocation

This year I used an optimal rebalancing calculator to max out my NISA allocation without selling anything, although it is not in my approach to invest so much in one chunk. Next year I will increase my monthly investment so that I stick more closely to yen cost averaging.

I own too many individual funds etc now to be bothered noting all, but using yen cost average method with constant amount per month, so far my NISA is up about 10% since inception. I own no currency hedged funds, and aiming for lots of equities, less bonds, even less reits, with a mix across developed and developing markets. No Japanese stocks but an extra focus on US stocks.

The key I feel is certainly to Buy Buy Buy when things go to custard - be in this for the long run. I learned that certain relatives of mine went with an approach of building a diversified portfolio of individual stocks and sounds like their original investment is up by 400% now. Certainly something to aspire to.

I will stick with my passive investing approach, but I am learning about BS, PL and CF stuff at the moment to try to improve my chances of evaluating individual stocks.

Once I have maxed my NISA account I will keep doing my the same with my standard account and pay tax.

[RetireJapan]

This is interesting. I am using Monex but never made this mistake. Monex makes you ‘login’ to the Monex account separately, so it kind of is second nature to me. (But then I typically am only investing with my NISA account.)

Perhaps those suffering this problem are using other brokers?

Yep. On Rakuten you choose where the order goes when you make it. Pretty easy but if you space out and forget what you're doing you can make a mistake

[Zoomtokyo]

Hi ZoomTokyo,

Interesting that you have invested in the 日本新世紀 fund. Is the fund’s full name the 日本株セレクトオープン, which offers exposure to five Japanese equity funds run by Mitsubishi’s asset management arm? The expense ratio of 1.5 percent seems a bit steep?

Dan, Around the time I bought it, I recall that asset managers outside Japan were pretty enthusiastic about small Japanese firms that were cutting, edge so I wanted some of that in my otherwise staid portfolio. Yep, the expense ratio is high, but it's giving a decent return and I'll be keeping an eye on it. Anyway, MUFG's offerings are limited. I'm restricted to mutual funds, basically.