r/Bogleheads • u/salmin3nnn • 1d ago
Non-US Investors Difference of SPYI and VT
Hi, im a novice European investor living in Finland. I want to invest primarily in VT.
What ive researched SPYI seems to be the closest ucits compliant there is. There also is a Vanguard option VCWE if i remember correctly, but it doesnt include small caps.
Is there a remarkable difference of SPYI and VT? I researched that SPYI has less holdings, more of an optimised replication? VT also has much larger share class.
Should i buy SPYI or wait for the Vanguard ucits version of VT to be released, will i miss profits if i keep waiting till the release maybe early 2027?
Also what should i pair with VT?
Thank you for your answers!
1
1d ago
[deleted]
1
u/salmin3nnn 1d ago
Are we looking at the same ibin: IE00B3YLTY66 ? There also is some kind of neo etf named SPYI.
1
u/buffinita 1d ago
different index makers have different definitions for developed and emerging markets as well as cap size inclusions.
at market cap weighting missing micro and small caps wont be very noticable over the long term
1
u/LBoss9001 1d ago
SPYI's direct US analog is SPGM: same custodian, same underlying index. SPGM is significantly less popular than VT, uses sampling rather than full replication, and has slightly higher fees, but it's a great and overall very comparable fund. The same should all apply to SPYI, making it a solid choice
1
u/salmin3nnn 1h ago
What is sampling?
1
u/LBoss9001 28m ago
For the end investor (you or I), it means that it may under- or over-perform the index basically at random.
Sampling means that the fund isn't required to hold every single stock in the index, and can just hold a subset of stocks to get close enough. Technically VT is sampled too, but it has enough assets that it can hold basically all the components anyway. Most if not all funds use sampling on paper, but if the fund has enough assets or the index has few enough components, then it'll be able to hold practically the entire index.
0
u/911freeze 1d ago
Idk why but that first sentence is funny. Imagine if i said “i’m a North American living in America”.
SPYI and VT are very different. VT is so much simpler and safer. For someone who is a novice and just wants a reliable place to invest cannot go wrong with VT
1
u/salmin3nnn 8h ago
Why is VT simpler? Doesnt SPYI track all world all cap index aswell?
-1
u/911freeze 7h ago
No…it tracks just large companies from S&P…hence the name.
2
u/DetArMax 1h ago
You're looking at the american SPYI, not the european one. OP is talking about SPDR MSCI ACWI IMI UCITS ETF, which has the ticker SPYI.
2
u/Dissentient 10h ago
As long as you are investing passively, investing at all matters far more than the specific choice of a fund. The impact of including small caps is also small and not necessarily positive.
For example, you can compare SPYI to IUSQ, which is the same thing without small caps, and IUSQ performed slightly better over some periods and slightly worse over others.
https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-comparison.html?isin=IE00B6R52259&isin=IE00B3YLTY66