Other ETFs of world bonds and stocks (Alternatives to VT and BND)?
Here is another choice I like, iShares JPMorgan USD Emerging Markets Bond (EMB) Here is the world ETFs
Ending up with nothing is an unlikely situation unless you invest 100% in a company stock and the company goes under. In order to give you a good answer we need to see what options your employer gives for 401k investments. The best advice would be to take a list of all options that your employer allows and talk with a financial advisor. Here are a few options that you may or may not have as an option from an employer: Definitions from wikipedia: A target-date fund – also known as a lifecycle, dynamic-risk or age-based fund – is a collective investment scheme, usually a mutual fund, designed to provide a simple investment solution through a portfolio whose asset allocation mix becomes more conservative as the target date (usually retirement) approaches. An index fund or index tracker is a collective investment scheme (usually a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund) that aims to replicate the movements of an index of a specific financial market... An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is an investment fund traded on stock exchanges, much like stocks.[1] An ETF holds assets such as stocks, commodities, or bonds, and trades close to its net asset value over the course of the trading day. Most ETFs track an index, such as a stock index or bond index. ETFs may be attractive as investments because of their low costs, tax efficiency, and stock-like features. The capital stock (or stock) of an incorporated business constitutes the equity stake of its owners. Which one can you lose everything in? You can lose everything in stocks by the company going under. In Index funds the entire market that it follows would have to collapse. The chances are slim here since the index made up of several companies. The S&P 500 is made up of 500 leading companies publicly traded in the U.S.  A Pacific-Europe index such as MSCI EAFE Index is made up of 907 companies. The chances of losing everything in an ETF are also slim. The ETF that follows the S&P 500 is made up of 500 companies. An Pacific-Europe ETF such as MSCI EAFE ETF is made up of 871 companies. Target date funds are also slim to lose everything. Target date funds are made up of several companies like indexes and etfs and also mix in bonds and other investments depending on your age. What would I recommend? I would recommend the Index funds and/or ETFs that have the lowest fee that make up the following strategy for your age: Why Not Target Date Funds or Stocks? Target date funds have high fees. Later in life when you are closer to retirement you may want to add bonds to your portfolio. At that time if this is the only option to add bonds then you can change your elections. Stocks are too risky for you with your current knowledge. If your company matches by buying their stock you may want to consider reallocating that stock at certain points to your Index funds or ETFs. "One alternative to bogleheadism is the permanent portfolio concept (do NOT buy the mutual fund behind this idea as you can easily obtain access to a low cost money market fund, stock index fund, and bond fund and significantly reduce the overall cost).  It doesn't have the huge booms that stock plans do, but it also doesn't have the crushing blows either.  One thing some advisers mention is success is more about what you can stick to than what ""traditionally"" makes sense, as you may not be able to stick to what traditionally makes sense (all people differ). This is an excellent pro and con critique of the permanent portfolio (read the whole thing) that does highlight some of the concerns with it, especially the big one: how well will it do in a world of high interest rates?  Assuming we ever see a world of high interest rates, it may not provide a great return. The authors make the assumption that interest rates will be rising in the future, thus the permanent portfolio is riskier than a traditional 60/40.  As we're seeing in Europe, I think we're headed for a world of negative interest rates - something in the past most advisers have thought was very unlikely.  I don't know if we'll see interest rates above 6% in my lifetime and if I live as long as my father, that's a good 60+ years ahead. (I realize people will think this is crazy to write, but consider that people are willing to pay governments money to hold their cash - that's how crazy our world is and I don't see this changing.)" The simple answer is technically bonds don't have earnings, hence no P/E. What I think the OP is really asking how do I compare stock and bond ETFs. Some mature stocks exhibit very similar characteristics to bonds, so at the margin if you are considering investing between 2 such investments that provide stable income in the form of dividends, you might want to use the dividend/price ratio (D/P) of the stock and compare it to the dividend yield of the bond. If you go down to the basics, both the bond and the stock can be considered  the present value of all future expected cashflows. The cash that accrues to the owner of the stock is future dividends and for the bond is the coupon payments. If a company were to pay out 100% of its earnings, then the dividend yield D/P would be conveniently E/P. For a company with P/E of 20 that paid out it's entire earnings, one would expect D/P = 1/20 = 5% This serves as a decent yard stick in the short term ~ 1 year to compare mature stock etfs with stable prospects vs bond funds since the former will have very little expected price growth (think utilities), hence they both compete on the cashflows they throw off to the investor. This comparison stops being useful for stock ETFs with higher growth prospects since expected future cashflows are much more volatile. This comparison is also not valid in the long term since bond ETFs are highly sensitive to the yield curve (interest rate risk) and they can move substantially from where they are now. Given those assumptions (which I happen to think are reasonable) it seems to me the obvious place is to buy non-Australian assets, such as the Vanguard VTS (total US share market) and VEU (world ex-US) ETFs, and perhaps also some international fixed-interest ETFs.   I think keeping a certain amount of cash would be prudent anyhow. If you felt very sure this was going to happen, you could borrow in Australia and buy foreign assets, expecting that as the AUD falls, the relative cost of the borrowing will also fall.  This is obviously fairly risky, not least because Australian interest rates are already high and may go much higher, and while the rates go up the exchange rate will also likely go up. As I mentioned on another answer, I think buying gold or other commodity instruments is a poor choice here because the Australian economy and the AUD is so tied to those prices already. So, couple of things. Firstly, every international ETF includes risk disclosure language in the prospectus covering both market disruption events as well as geopolitical risk, so the sponsor would be pretty well insulated from direct liability for anything. If the Russian market were truly shut down there are true-up mechanisms in place but in the scenario you're describing the market is still open, it's just only a few participants can trade in it.  First thing to do is shut down creates- that is, allow no new money to come into the fund. This at least prevents your problem from getting bigger.   Second you're going to switch all redemptions to in kind only. MV itself can't trade in the underlying so they're kind of jammed here. An ETF sponsor can't really refuse your redemption request (can delay, but only for a short time), but they can control the form in which they respond to it.    What theoretically should happen here is an AP not subject to sanctions will step in and handle redemptions.  Issue is, they'll probably charge for this so you should expect the fund to start trading at a discount to NAV (you, as an investor, sell to them cheaply, they submit a redemption request, then sell the stocks locally). Someone else has pointed that market makers will start stat arbing the fund using correlated/substitute instruments, which totally will help keep things in line, but my guess is that you'd still see the name trading away from NAV regardless. Driver of this will be the amount of money desperate to get out - if investors are content to wait the sanctions out who knows. the whole room basically jumped on me I really have an issue with this. Someone providing advice should offer data, and guidance. Not bully you or attack you.  You offer 3 choices. And I see intelligent answers advising you against #1. But I don't believe these are the only choices. My 401(k) has an S&P fund, a short term bond fund, and about 8 other choices including foreign, small cap, etc. I may be mistaken, but I thought regulations forced more choices. From the 2 choices, S&P and short term bond, I can create a stock bond mix to my liking. With respect to the 2 answers here, I agree, 100% might not be wise, but 50% stock may be too little. Moving to such a conservative mix too young, and you'll see lower returns.  I like your plan to shift more conservative as you approach retirement.   Edit - in response to the disclosure of the fees -  1.18% for Aggressive, .96% for Moderate I wrote an article 5 years back, Are you 401(k)o'ed in which I discuss the level of fees that result in my suggestion to not deposit above the match. Clearly, any fee above .90% would quickly erode the average tax benefit one might expect. I also recommend you watch a PBS Frontline episode titled The Retirement Gamble It makes the point as well as I can, if not better.  The benefit of a 401(k) aside from the match (which you should never pass up) is the ability to take advantage of the difference in your marginal tax rate at retirement vs when earned. For the typical taxpayer, this means working and taking those deposits at the 25% bracket, and in retirement, withdrawing at 15%. When you invest in a fund with a fee above 1%, you can see it will wipe out the difference over time. An investor can pay .05% for the VOO ETF, paying as much over an investing lifetime, say 50 years, as you will pay in just over 2 years.  They jumped on you? People pushing funds with these fees should be in jail, not offering financial advice. There are ETFs listed on the Brazilian stock market. Specifically there is one for S&P500 - SPXI11, which might fulfill your requirements, though as one commenter has observed, it doesn't answer your original question. "Since your 401k/IRA are maxed out and you don't need a 529 for kids, the next step is a plain ol' ""Taxable account."" The easiest and most hassle-free would be automatic contributions into a Mutual Fund.  Building on poolie's answer, I think mutual funds are much more automatic/hassle-free than ETFs, so in your case (and with your savings rate), just invest in the Investor (or Admiral) shares of VEU and VTI. Other hassle-free options include I-Bonds ($5k/year), and 5-year CDs."