Home Bias and Global Diversification

So, today's topic on looking at home bias and global diversification. I think it's fair to say that every day we enjoy the benefits of an interconnected world. We may well start our day with, a cup of coffee that originated in South America. We check our email on our smartphone, which has been designed in California and manufactured in Taiwan, and then we dress and clothes woven from Egyptian fabrics before driving our American made Tesla or German made BMW, or riding in a French built train to work. And as consumers, we rarely think twice about the benefits that we have from access to such a, wide variety of goods that the global market has to offer. And yet, many investors will often concentrate their portfolios in favor of their home market at the expense of global diversification. For example, while UK equity markets represent around 4% of the value of global equity markets, many UK investors tend to allocate around a third of their equity assets to domestic equities. And this phenomenon, which can be observed across other countries around the world, is known in the investment community as home country bias. 
Given that certain frictions may be associated with investing abroad, a home country bias might make sense for an investor in certain cases. However, in general, neglecting the benefits that global diversification has to offer may increase risks and greatly reduce the investment opportunity set. There's been many charts and graphs that reveal that between, for instance, even looking at, period 2002 to 2021, that twelve different developed countries out of 22 had the best performing equity market in a given calendar year, but yet no country had the best performing market for more than two consecutive years. And this trend was also observed in emerging markets, whereby 14 different emerging market countries out of 20 had ah, the best performing market in a given year and once again, no country had the best performing market in two consecutive years. In other words, the data shows that it is difficult to know which markets will outperform, from year to year and we see that also at company level, at sector level too. So by holding a globally diversified portfolio, investors such as clients of Wells Gibson are instead well positioned to capture the returns wherever they occur. And clearly, attempting to pick only winning markets in any given period is ah, a challenging proposition. By pursuing a globally diversified approach to investing, one doesn't have to attempt to pick winners to achieve a rewarding and perhaps successful investment experience. So by expanding the investment opportunity set beyond your domestic equity market, as an investor you can really help increase the reliability of outcomes. In other words, investors can be confident that, a globally diversified portfolio will hold the best and worst, of course, performing countries each year. But the key thing is that by holding a diversified portfolio you are more than likely going to capture the returns that the market gives. And what that means probably, is, over time that your portfolio should give you a return above inflation, which really is something we all need to be aware of increasingly. 

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