Nerina Visser makes the case that the famous 60/40 portfolio is the wrong starting point for a South African investor going offshore — we do not go abroad for yield, we go for growth we cannot get at home. Her answer is the ETFSA Oyster Global Balanced AMETF (JSE: OYSTER), a single-ticker, 100% offshore, 80/20 growth-to-income portfolio built from global heavyweight ETFs and notes. It is also, as it stands, the only tax-free-compatible ETF on the JSE offering physical commodity exposure.

• 🧭 Why 60/40 is an American answer to an American question — and why Oyster anchors at 80/20

• 🌍 The gap between economies and markets: emerging markets drive ~62% of global growth but make up only ~12% of global equity market cap

• 🏗️ Growth is more than equities — listed property, alternatives and physical commodities all sit in the 80%

• 🤖 The AI infrastructure tilt: power, materials and data centres rather than the Magnificent Seven

• 🇺🇸 Why US mid-caps capture reshoring, fiscal support and defence spending that the S&P 500 does not

• 💰 Fees, AUM and why the total cost is expected to land around 0.5%–0.6%

• 🔓 Tax-free compatibility, including gold exposure you cannot otherwise hold in a TFSA

• 🎯 What “actively managed” means when there is no index to track — and why 80% of this portfolio will not move

• 👵 Retirement: why de-risking into income assets at 65 is a legacy of shorter life expectancies

• 🧾 How tax works inside a CIS versus in your own hands

Key Takeaways 💡

• 80/20, not 60/40. South Africans already earn strong interest and dividends locally. Going offshore for yield is a category error — the offshore job is diversified capital growth, so the anchor is 80% growth assets, 20% income.

• Skate to where the puck is going. Emerging economies produce roughly 62% of global growth but emerging markets are only ~12% of global equity indices. Oyster deliberately tilts to a 80/20 developed-to-emerging equity split rather than the index’s ~88/12.

• Overlap in the holdings is deliberate, not sloppy. Board Notice 90 caps any single underlying fund at 20%, so a second All-World exposure is required — and using an FNB-issued ETN rather than a second ETF cuts the cost of getting it.

• This is a growth product, not an income product. Expect a yield below 1%, paid twice a year. Many underlyings are total-return or accumulating, so distributions never reach the fund as cash.

• Diversification is about difference, not count. Holding five different JSE-listed S&P 500 ETFs is not a diversified portfolio. Use Oyster’s daily transparency to check what you would actually be adding.

• Retirees still need growth. Full de-risking at retirement only makes sense if you are buying a guaranteed life annuity. Living annuity capital has to beat inflation for decades.

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At Just One Lap, we are big fans of passive investment using ETFs. In this weekly blog, we discuss ETFs on the local market and the factors you need to consider when choosing an ETF. If you have wondered how one ETF differs from another, this is where you can find out. We explain which index each ETF tracks, what type of portfolio could benefit from holding each ETF, and how the costs will affect your bottom line.