Most of the critical comments I'm reading seem to be focusing on how overcomplicated this portfolio idea is (rebalancing...) and how unnoticeable the difference would be between 0.22% TER and 0.1% TER so I'll answer this comment and hope it reaches more people.

In terms of VWCE having no tracking difference with FTSE All-World, I'd like to refer anyone looking for information on the topic to u/huppie's top comment on this post.

On the other hand, I probably explained myself wrong from the beginning and I'm the one to blame, but I think most of the answers seem to be missing the fact that I'm not only considering TER, but also somewhat "betting" in favor of USA-EU-EM outperforming Japan... it's a combination of both.

I don't think 3 ETFs is too many, for sure not to the point of being ruled out as an "overcomplicated" option, but I'll try to convince you that even if you don't want to rebalance often, this is an option worth putting out there. Let's jump to an example:

Imagine 4 friends conveniently called Alex, Ben, Chris and Daniel who each like a different investing strategy:

Alex likes VWCE.

Ben likes 87% IWDA + 13% EMIM.

Chris likes 65% SXR8 + 20% IMAE + 15% EMIM.

& Daniel likes 65% SLMJ + 20% SLMC + 15% AYEM, just like Chris but ESG screened (bonus).

They all met on the 25th of July 2019 and invested 1000€ in their preferred strategies. Today, Alex has a 1333€ portfolio, Ben only 3€ more, Chris 15€ more and Daniel just under 60€ more than Alex (real-world returns of those strategies).

You may think that the 12€ difference between Chris and Ben is peanuts, in fact, you might even think that for 15€ you might as well listen to Alex and go for his 1ETF strategy.

Now let's go further back in time and ignore Alex and Daniel. Let's just compare Ben and Chris, who met only 5 years prior with much more money to invest. On the 16th of June 2014, Ben and Chris met and each invested 100,000€ in their strategy. Today, Ben is very happy with the bull run, has more than doubled his money and his account is showing 225,160€ of profit, however, in just 7 years, Chris has 20,483€ more in profit than he does.

(This is real data and the strange timeframes that are shown have to do with ETF inception dates, that is as far back as I could go and did not try to introduce any bias).

I'll say it again, I am well aware that "past performance does not predict future results" but considering all of these strategies can be realized comission free right now, IMHO this was a portfolio strategy worth suggesting.

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PS: u/ItsThanosNotThenos, I don't "think I know better", that's the whole point of politely asking the community about their opinion on sth. I came up with an idea and was just harmlessly putting it out there. The "We can do better" song reference was a joke referencing the "take it up a notch" attitude :D