I think the comment about what predecessors should have done is about right. Although they had no way to know this upfront.
Talking about what we should be doing today.
I think if one doesn’t want to have Home (regional) bias, then using market weight for Eurozone sounds right if we say we believe in following
no idea what will happen in future
market has already priced in what is known
But I would like to tell you that a lot of Modeling from Vanguard, JP Morgan etc actually suggests that they expect US stocks to slightly underperform in next 10 years. At least that’s what the expected return models suggest (they can be wrong). Links below.
Doesn’t Worldex-EU overperformed because the US overperformed ?
According to me, it is true that in Europe, lots of countries with a lot of good companies (in number, not cap weighted) are not in the eurozone (Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland etc), while some countries in the eurozone have very little good companies (Italy, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Belgium)
That’s not completely right. For Australia, Canada and UK, the volatility plot is a parabola. I can find the vanguard paper where I saw similar plots if you’re interested.
What I’m thinking of doing, but been late, is actually looking at long-term holds from quality-focused managers and adding the odd stock here and there as you say. What’s held me back so far is that this is pure stock picking.
Yeah, of course Buffett said “diversification is pointless, if you know what you’re doing”, pity is few people in history seem to “know what they’re doing” and I doubt I’m one of them
I am holding Novo Nordisk from before it became all the rage, has worked out very well, I believe - and back up my belief due to my knowledge of pharma and medicine - that Novo will continue printing money for years to come. That’s what I mean by looking at long-term holds. Just need to dedicate more evenings to research…
Can you give some examples? I’d start with saying I am looking at ABB (CH) and holding Novo Nordisk (DK). But it’s a bold statement, there are many great companies in the Eurozone too.
It IS expensive, but they have first mover advantage in a YUGE (Donald Trump voice) market, and amazingly deep data to back it up. They (and others like Lilly and now Roche) are also looking at what’s possibly one of the last BIG hurrah’s for pharma - Alzheimer’s and NASH.
My view is that in a global economy active management by over-weighting companies based on which stock exchange they happen to be listed is not likely to be a solid way to achieve out performance.
There might be other reasons for over weighting EU though. For example, tying your fortunes to those of the local economy.
If you lived in San Francisco since the 90s and didn’t buy shares of tech companies, rents have gone up by so much you might not be able to afford to live there today
I can’t think of a realistic scenario that would apply at Eurozone level. I was just trying to be polite and guess why you might want this overweight exposure !
I’m no fan of home bia for the sake of asset allocation, though I do like home bia as a way to bolster access to capital condition for local companies, which should benefit local economy and help with our standard of living, on a really, really small actual effect basis.
That being said, I would say that if the local economy skyrockets, prices of goods and services are likely to go up as local wages hopefully increase, holding stock of local companies may help mitigate that by also increasing the value of our assets (that can be sold or provide increased income through dividends).
Our local government is also more likely to intervene in case of a crash of the local economy, providing us with a potential safety net against such a crash which we wouldn’t have if things got dire for companies for which we are foreign investors.
I don’t think that really works out in Switzerland, where most of the tradable companies are international behemots and the average investor doesn’t really have access to a market of local companies (which are mostly private SMEs) but it might for other economies.
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