Golden Retriever Awards – Our 2026 Review Of The Best Global Equity ETFs
May 22, 2026
Golden Retriever Awards – Our 2026 Review Of The Best Global Equity ETFs
The Definitive Guide to Equity Index Investing - PART 2
This article is Part 2 of our definitive guide to Equity Index Investing.
In 2019, I cycled 4,000+ km across Japan, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. A few typhoons forced me to leave, but one reason I will come back is the architecture, especially the peaceful countryside and the Japanese gardens.
Japanese people love minimalism and simplicity. In a lot of fields, as Steve Jobs said, building simple products is hard. Making a product like the iPhone certainly was.
Yet, in investing, building efficient equity portfolios is simple. Today, let’s look how to do it using just one ETF.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Do You Understand Your Strategy? If you can’t explain it to a Golden Retriever, you don’t understand it. Your complicated strategy will be tested by the market – like the value of subprime bonds was for german investors in 2008. That’s when most investors bail out.
- Why A Global ETF? It is likely what a lot of experienced Wall Street professionals would choose if they had to opt for one fund to Hold On for Dear Life. Global ETFs cover all sectors and countries, follow the money, are cheap, hassle-free and unbiased.
- SPDR wins again in 2026. We promoted SPDR to #1 a year ago and the last 12 months proved us right. The case is even stronger this year. On top of that, SPDR is now the cheapest Global ETF in Europe once you account for all ongoing costs, not just TER.
- Amundi is now in our TOP 3. The story in Europe is different to what’s happening in the U.S. Historically, Vanguard was the cheapest and a clear leader. Today both Vanguard and iShares are expensive, and Vanguard’s recent fee cut wasn’t enough to change that. Amundi has replaced iShares as #3 in our ranking after improving replication quality. If you are looking for a non-US provider, Amundi may do the trick.
- Some investors need to consider local aspects. UK Investors have also a couple of additional Mutual Funds to choose from. Swiss and Elective Professional Investors can choose even cheaper ETFs domiciled in the U.S. French investors may need to use synthetic ETFs in their PEA wrappers. Belgian investors can reduce TOB tax by choosing a EU but not Belgium-registered ETF. We summarise those at the end of the article.
What if you could only buy ONE single investment
I spent part of my career managing Asset-Backed Securities. Yes, the ones that blew up in 2008. I actually went into this field only in 2009 – to ‘clean up’ the mess.
One thing that you quickly learn when running complex, multi-layered models, is to be alarmed when investments get complicated, and if you can’t explain it to a six-year-old or a Golden Retriever.
Be alarmed if you can't explain it to a Golden Retriever
One of the biggest mistakes Investors made was taking things at face value, especially for very complex products, while being remote from the place where these products originated.
I look at you, German Investors in US Subprime Bonds.
It happened, for example, when an Investor bought Assets with the highest credit rating but didn’t quite understand and didn’t have the systems to analyse.
Most of us don’t have access to sophisticated products, but a lot of traps remain. Academic research and empirical evidence point to the fact that simple Investing Strategies like Index Investing usually work best, are easily understood and accessible to anyone.
What if you could only buy into ONE single investment and HODL?
Interestingly, when you speak to people who have been in the investment business for a long time and ask them the above question, which by definition makes them think about their true beliefs and long term risks they understand and leaves short term speculation off the table, with the idea that:
- They could only choose one passive investment for their personal portfolio
- HODL (Hold On for Dear Life) so that they can only withdraw from it to fund their living expenses.
The answer often is... a Global Equity ETF.
Sure enough, if we assume you can’t swap investments and can only withdraw to fund your living expenses, we’re taking out the biggest investment risk out of the equation – yourself and your emotions.
And in fact, wise investors often move from complex portfolios to this simple strategy as they realise that the market almost always wins in the long run.
The Simplest Investment - A Global ETF
Do you need knowledge to invest?
You don’t need much knowledge to put your cash to work.
In fact, to get exposure to Global Equities, you only need a single ETF. And this exposure evolves with the markets as certain markets grow or decline.
Currently, c. 60% of all World Stocks as measured by market capitalization are US Equities.
But it wasn’t always that way, as you see on the animation below (use the ▶️ button).
The chart represents the % of World Stock Market Capitalization over the past 120 years.
In essence – US dominance is possible, but very unlikely to remain permanent.
Market performance as measured by size
A Century of Changing Dominance
Sources: Bankeronwheels.com calculations based on JST database, Dimson, Marsh & Staunton for historical data, and MSCI for modern era. Approximate World equity market capitalisation, year-end figures, 1900–2026. Rest of World aggregates all markets outside the named countries. Korea, Taiwan, India separately tracked from 2023 given their recent rise. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
While there are reasons for the current allocations, imagine if China or India accelerated opening up and transparency of their Capital Markets? China’s current weight is only c. 4% in the Global Stock Market, whereas its GDP is 65% of the US GDP. The mix of Emerging Market sectors – with more Tech – is changing as well. And US Tech often doesn’t have access to those markets.
The beauty of the single Global ETF is that you don’t need to predict who’s going to win because you will own all countries and sectors.
But how did the Global Equity ETFs perform? Let’s look at the Benchmark with the longest track record – the MSCI ACWI Index.
GLOBAL ETF Benchmark Performance
Doubling in 10 Years, 5x in 20 Years, 12x in 30 Years.
If you assume a 10-year investment horizon, by having invested $1,000 and kept it for the entire period it would have on average returned c. 8.5% per year (accounting for 0.3% fees but before 2-2.5% inflation) and your portfolio would have more than doubled, on average, during 10 years.
Of course, if you held longer than for a decade, the return would be closer to exponential over time given how compound interest works. After 30 years, it’s closer to 12x your investment. Check out calculator.
A Global EQUITY INDEX RETURNED 8.5% PER YEAR
Losses were Virtually Impossible
More importantly, as wise investors know, the likelihood of seeing losses was close to zero beyond a 10-15 year holding period.
In fact, from 1988 to 2020 the likelihood was below 3% if you kept the portfolio for the entire 10-year holding period. Essentially the only case was if you invested in 1999 and were forced to sell in 2009.
Simple doesn't mean the ride will be easy
Maximum loss from the last market peak
And yet, this is a hypothetical exercise and assumes the emotions are not part of the game.
If you watched your investment account at the end of every month, I don’t and managed to forget my broker account password a few years ago, which I’m really proud of, there would have been cases where losses would be close to or even slightly exceeded 50%. This assumes that your reference point was the previous market peak.
It’s not how one should look at a portfolio, but often investors do and that’s why portfolio protection is key.
Now, what are the practical arguments for such a radically simple equity portfolio?
5 Reasons Why You should consider a Global ETF
#1 - The Global ETF covers all countries and sectors
- Your exposure is to all developed markets and emerging economies
- The only exception are Frontier markets (tiny markets with marginal influence)
- The other exceptions are usually Small Caps, because most ETFs follow either MSCI ACWI or FTSE All World (see here for my comprehensive comparison of Equity Indices)
#2 - The Global ETF follows the Money
#3 - The Global ETF is unbiased
#4 - The Global ETF is hassle-free
If your portfolio has multiple ETFs you have more rebalancing work. You also have to rebalance your portfolio whenever it drifts from your desired allocation. You can focus on more interesting things in life than ETFs.
#5 - The Global ETF is cheap and tax-efficient
One ETF is cost-efficient and involves fewer transaction fees. There is no need to rebalance your Equity portfolio and incur trading costs and potentially additional taxes.
Criteria that matter
What Should I Consider As A Long-Term Investor?
- well-established names in the Industry
- Minimum Fund size of $1 Billion
- Market-cap-weighted indices
- tax-efficiency (Prefer Irish-based)
- No currency hedging
- No Fully funded synthetic structures
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