OK. So when I look at your original post, you've indicated that...

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    OK. So when I look at your original post, you've indicated that your were basically looking for a balanced indexed fund. Given your responses about LICs and ETF, you're obviously not a novice with funds. So when I try to reconcile this list of potential candidates, I am scratching my head a bit. So lets start at the beginning. Nearly half of these are obviously not funds (ARF, AST, CHC, CMW etc etc). So if you are looking to take an index approach, unless you plan to hold these at market weight (or use some other form of index methodology a.k.a. smart beta), this seems odd.

    You also basically have a universe comprised of Australian equities, with the exception of RENT and MGE. While acknowledging that there are also LICs in there with an international bent (WGF), the reality is that they will act like Aust. equities when local markets are volatile. You've also got no fixed income exposure. And you are looking at a lot of property stocks, presumably for yield. Hostplus has no property as far as I can see.

    If you wanted to very simply replicate hostplus and then take other exposures to run a core/satellite approach, I believe the simplest and cheapest way to do this is using ETFs for exposure, investing at appropriate weights in VAS, IWLD, VGE, AAA, BILL, VIF.


    By the sounds of it, dividends are important to you, hence the reason you are looking at LICs. However, this basically means you are trading off an index methodology for generally active. Many of the older internally managed LICs like ARG, DUI, AFIC etc are very 'index like' in their returns and level of activity. But you will only get Australian equities exposure with these, and no fixed income exposure at all.

    Personally, to balance replicating hostplus in methodology and get a tilt towards dividends, I'd use the ETF portfolio as above, but substitute either smart beta ETFs with a dividend or some LICs for dividend stability. You might use RDV or VHY as ETFs for VAS, or maybe WAM for a LIC. For international shares, maybe substitute WDIV or PMC.

    It's complex, and there is a lot of ways to do this. But I think you need to decide what the priority is. Index strategies or dividends.
 
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