eMaxis Slim All Country vs Developed Countries vs...

[Billy]

Thank you for the explanation! Would you happen to remember the name of that Japanese investing book you mentioned?

[sutebayashi]

Yes I do, it was
完全レベル別30代〜50代のための海外投資「超」入門
By Satoshi Okamura (岡村 聡)

However that book is old now, and the specific funds and ETFs introduced are a bit stale - or the fund costs have come down. I recall it introduced eMAXIS funds, but it was before the Slim versions were marketed. Any book that pushes for broad based index investing in a passive fashion would be equivalent to what I got out of it.

[jcc]

I'm not talking about timing the market based on day to day performance. More like, next January I'll compare the returns between all country and developed countries and say all country is doing way better, then I might put in a little money. Then if the trend continues, then I'll keep buying it.

This is actually the reverse of what is recommended(namely balancing).

There's a general theory of things(including sectors such as developed/developing) regressing to the mean(return), so if you buy whatever is currently low in your allocation(that's been doing poorly lately) you are buying it at a lower price.

What you're doing is buying high.

Emotionally it's understandable. You want to keep throwing money at the thing that's doing well because you see a "pattern" because humans are inherently pattern seeking creatures. But there is no pattern. You're buying in after things started going up. You should've been buying before. That's why balancing strategies that mechanically just reallocate to a given split do better than emotionally filling up with an eventual target of reaching that split.