SP Funds released two new shariah compliant ETFs, which I found while using Zoya’s app search features.
The two new funds by SP Funds are: SPTE and SPWO
SPTE is a global technology fund. SPWO is a developing and emerging world fund.
I started thinking that, with the addition of these two funds, a Dave Ramsey-style 4-fund strategy could be followed usng four ETFs by SP funds. Dave Ramsey recommends mutual funds for the following 4 catergories.
Growth
Growth and Income
Aggressive Growth
International
Now, this approach is quite easy for investors to do, surprisingly. Lets use the following funds…
SPUS - Growth (broad US index)
SPRE - Growth and Income (Real estate works well as a proxy for this category)
SPTE - Aggressive Growth (a pure technology fund with global exposure fits the bill)
SPWO - Internation (exactly the fund’s goal)
Glad to hear your thoughts. I will also add, I also like Dave Ramsey’s advice about getting out of debt and holding an emergency fund.
Salam Alaikum Micheal, I’ve recently started on this forum and have been scrolling through some posts. I wanted to thank you for this blogpost as while I am a fan of Dave Ramsey through his work on debt-awareness. I did not know of his 4 Funds advice.
I have a question and a concern, firstly I’ll introduce my bias. I’m a firm believer in Jack Bogle’s advice regarding wide market index funds, my goal is to maintain a beta of 1 on my portfolio as the SP500 is the ideal investment for me if it wasn’t haram without a shariah fund.
My question is, it has been 10 months since the funds release. Have you implemented this portfolio? And if so what do you think? And if not that would be insightful as well.
And my concern is, any wide US stock such as SPUS would cover income, growth and aggressive growth. Except in this instance the dividend yield for SPUS is low, if any of these funds are dividend heavy that would make this point less credible (although there is a whole debate and rabbit hole regarding dividend distribution and market value). Back to the point, a wide US stock would cover the top performers in income, growth and aggressive growth. So would a 75% SPUS, 25% SPWO fit into this category?
I look forward to hearing from you regarding this topic, and to also run some backtesting with this type of portfolio when I get the chance (using non halal ETFs to get a broad look on the fundamentals)
Thanks for the response, and I was alerted to it by email… Yes, in fact I am implementing this Ramsey-inspired SP Funds portfolio in my retirement accounts. The Ramsey approach is to have 4 different funds that cover these broad definitons of growth, aggressive growth, international, and growth&income. Ramsey is less of an investment advosor than Bogle, so his aim is to get people started with confidence. So far I’ve been mostly satisfied with the performance. To my surprise, the two funds I was less convinced of in terms of potential, the international find and the real estate (which I use as a proxy for growth&income given its 4% dovidend yield) fund have done pretty well. The global tech fund seemed to have done well the first half of the year and totally crashed at some point and is starting to recover, now about average with the others. SPUS mostly follows the S&P500 which has done decent. Its meant to be a set and forget it profile, though I do find myself checking it a lot out of curiosity. I often find that on days when one etf is down, the others are up, leading to what feels like less volatility, but I havent measured it in terms of beta.
I’m a little less familiar with Bogle, but I believe some combination of SPUS and SPWO would follow well with his approach in not having overlap between funds. And you could also consider Sukuk as well, as an islamic proxy for bonds. I admit there is some overlap between SPWO and SPTE but they also have quite different betas or volatility levels. Also note there are also the UMMA and HLAL etfs which also can work in place of SPUS and SPWO, though they are simply managed by a different team.