i'm curious about how people outside of North America invest to make their money grow and save for retirement.
I know that when you go to any finance forum or listen to any of the countless investing "gurus" the concept of buying the market as a whole is the time tested and generally accepted way to invest. Even in the greatest bull run in history, any talk of trying to time the market or selling off some stocks and keep more cash on the side is met with a stern lecture about how you should just keep going forward and trust the methodology.
I just can't help but think that the historic trend of the stock market always going up has only been an accurate assumption because the US has largely been the dominate player. Hence North American investors would typically be heavy on US stock while having some diversification into other markets. As an example, as a Canadian the most common portfolio allocation would consist of: Canadian equities, Canadian bonds, US equities, and international equity.
How do people in other countries invest? Do they follow our allocations, or do they put more weight into their own nation's equities and bonds? Take for example the Chinese market and their version of the S&P: the Shanghai or China composite index. It has largely been volatile and in many cases passive investing (near the peaks) would have lost you money in the last decade. Hence why so many Chinese prefer buying real estate as a savings vehicle.
Curious to learn more about other markets and how index investing applies.
Submitted May 14, 2019 at 10:35AM by speedboxx http://bit.ly/2WG1Lo1
