Spawned out of discussions in the thread at https://moneyforums.city...h-ones-do-you-have.aspx to try and assess how much Vanguard do change their asset allocation. Quite hard to find historic portfolio data but this contains a few scrobbled datapoints.

Mainly focussed on sub-fund allocation, however I've also captured "UK equity exposure" and "North American Equities" percentages from the "Underlying asset classes" part of the quarterlies (which ought take the "Developed World ex-U.K" allocation into account correctly).

September 2022 from https://www.vanguard.co....etter-uk-en-2022-q3.pdf (dated Sept 30th 2022):



July 2019 from https://www.vanguard.co....strategy-newsletter.pdf at time of this post:



From https://www.vanguard.co....strategy-newsletter.pdf as captiured by the Wayback Machine at the wayback machine a handful of times:

July 2016



Related, this article from October 2016 mentions the "We're nudging investors away from their UK bias" thing: https://www.telegraph.co...way-from-their-uk-bias/ - however looking at the numbers 2014 & 2015 numbers below, it's hard to interpret them as being anything other than a very subtle nudge... at most a fraction of a percent off the UK allocation but certainly a couple onto the US maybe? But maybe it'd already been ongoing before 2014? (Lifestrategy was launched mid-2011 in the UK).

July 2015



July 2014



So back to then, looks basically "steady as a rock to me", 2015/2016 tweaks excepted. Hardly looks like a den of market-timing tactical-allocating iniquity but it'd be nice to find some data from between 2016 and 2019.

Update: Aha, trying to get further back still, Monevator had a 2011 article with the Lifestrategy 60 weightings around the time of their launch:

2011



So between 2011 and 2014 Vanguard did drop the UK equity holdings by ~5% and raise the international exposure by a similar amount. (It's interesting that they added an explicit US holding rather than simply just increasing the Developed World ex-UK holding.) See also a subsequent comment below about the bond allocation (entirely UK in 2011) becoming more international too.

Here's one view

https://citywire.co.uk/f...ck-market-bias/a1232783

Found the link
https://www.telegraph.co...s-cutting-back-british/
Quote: thank you Mr telegraph

You have a bias to British stocks and bonds. Why?
Currently, 25pc of our stock allocation is in Britain, and 35pc of our bonds are British although this was 100pc when we started as it was all we had access to. Our philosophy is that from a pure investment perspective it is best to have as small a “home bias” as possible. Typically we look at our competitors and aim to be lower. By doing this we hope the whole market will follow suit to reduce their bias.

Will your home bias be coming down then?
Probably in the not-too-distant future we will be dialling down that home bias, yes. Part of the reason we haven’t lately, even though there is a case for it, is that with Brexit going on we don’t want to be accused of making a tactical decision based on currency.

My understanding of the "home" bias of Vanguard LifeStrategy funds was because Vanguard believed that UK investors preferred having a home bias, but they would review this in future with a view to reducing it.
I recall reading this explanation somewhere.

If the pound strengthens considerably when Brexit is sorted, a home bias might be useful. Big if of course.

The headline on that 2016 article is "Vanguard: 'We're nudging investors away from their UK bias' " and in it there's a quote claiming "Looking at what Vanguard has done over the past few years, we have been gradually reducing the home bias in the fund range." (and it is the Lifestrategy range which is being talked about).

But if you go back to the 1st post in this thread and compare the weightings for the most obviously relevant holdings between the 2014, 2016, 2019 Lifestrategy60 captured there:

Developed World ex-U.K. Equity Index : 19.2%, 19.3%, 19.3%
U.S. Equity Index Fund: 13.2%, 14.7%, 14.2%
U.K. Equity Index Fund: 15.1%, 15.5%, 15%

...then it's not obvious that there's been any significant nudging going on at all.

However a bit more digging for old Lifestrategy asset allocations turned up an old 2011 Monevator article from around the time of their launch which claims the Lifestrategy 60 asset allocation back then was:

(will update the original post with these).

So looks like any nudging had been done between 2011 and 2014, with the UK weighting being dropped ~5% (to three-quarters of its previous weight) and the total US plus DevelopedWorld-exUK allocation being raised by a similar amount (interesting that they now have some explicit US exposure rather than getting it entirely through the DevelopedWorld holding).

Of course any further home-bias reduction seems to be stalled for now, by https://www.telegraph.co...s-cutting-back-british/ " Vanguard LifeStrategy: Brexit has stopped us cutting back British holdings".