As mentioned elsewhere, I rely heavily on all-in-one ETFs in my retirement portfolio. New to all-in-ones? Read a bit about them here.

Previously, I covered what’s in XGRO, which is an all-in-one you can purchase on the Canadian market. Because I also happen to have a lot of US dollar-based retirement savings, I have the majority of those funds invested in AOA. AOA is an 80/20 fund ¹ offered by BlackRock. It seems that this sort of all-in-one is not as popular in the US as Canada, not sure why². I see offerings from State Street that sound similar. BlackRock has other members of their asset allocation family with different equity percentages — there’s something for everyone!³

I thought it would be interesting to see what, exactly, is underneath every $100 you invest in AOA. So by reading AOA’s ETF description, following the ETF descriptions of what’s inside AOA, and doing a little math, I came up with the following breakdown⁴:

Fund	What is it?	How much?	Colour Commentary
IVV	US stock coverage that tracks the S&P 500 Index, 500 of the largest US companies	$46.44 of your $100 investment (of which ~3$ is in each of Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft, another $2 is in Amazon and Alphabet and $1 in each of Meta and Broadcom)	The Magnificent 7 and 493 other companies
IDEV	Broad international (ex-US) developed market stock coverage that tracks the MSCI WORLD ex USA IMI Index, about 2250 companies	$21.90 of your $100 investment (of which SAP gets 29 cents ASML gets 28 cents…)	This also includes a tiny slice of Canada…top holding is RBC at 16 cents of your $100
IUSB	Broad US Bond market exposure, about 16,000 bonds from government and corporate entities	$16.37 of your $100 investment (of which $6.29 is in US Treasury, $1.42 is in the Federal National Mortgage Association…)	12 month trailing yield is 4.07%, not too shabby
IEMG	3500 or so international companies from emerging markets, following the MSCI Emerging Markets Investable Market Index	$8.37 of your $100 investment (of which 72 cents is in Taiwan Semi, 36 cents is in TenCent..)	27% China, 19% Taiwan, 18% India, 10% South Korea…
IAGG	About 5800 international bonds tracking the Bloomberg Global Aggregate ex USD 10% Issuer Capped (Hedged) Index5	$2.83 of your $100 investment (of which 5 cents is Chinese T-Bills)	Trailing 12 month yield = 4.27%, even less shbby
IJH	US Midmarket stocks that track the S&P MidCap 400 Index	$2.67 of your $100 investment (of which 2 cents is in Williams Sonoma)	21% Industrials, 18% Financials…
IJR	US Small Cap stocks that track the S&P SmallCap 600 Index	$1.87 of your $100 investment (largest holding is Hims Hers Health — 2 cents)	IJH+IJR+IVV is sort of similar to ITOT

Like XGRO, investing in an all-in-one like AOA provides you with exposure to a bunch of different asset types across many different geographies in one product, including all of the “hot” stocks you read about ad nauseam. Diversification under one banner.

The big difference from XGRO is the very tiny representation of Canada overall. I worked it out to about 2.5% of the overall number, which makes sense given the size of Canada on a global scale.

I came across the “Three Fund Portfolio” popularized by Bogleheads over 15 years ago. AOA and its family members is more or less that concept.

1. Shorthand for “80% equity, 20% bonds”. There remains a lot of disagreement about the appropriate asset allocation, e.g. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=210178 ↩︎
2. Instead, I see a lot of “target date” retirement ETFs, which are in some ways similar, but lower the equity percentages as you get closer to the target date. ↩︎
3. There’s also AOR (60% equity), AOM (40% Equity) and AOK (30% Equity) ↩︎
4. Compare with the XGRO breakdown at https://moneyengineer.ca/2025/01/30/whats-the-deal-with-xgro/ ↩︎
5. That’s a mouthful. ↩︎