No. of Recommendations: 14
Jim, are you aware that you sing you a completely different tune than not long ago?
Necessity is the mother of invention : )
More seriously, there are different issues to consider, which give different pros and cons.
I don't dispute that the US has usually been a great place for capitalists, at least in the past. I did my big divestment for other reasons--I just don't like the notion of investing in a country whose official policy is to take over my home country against the emphatic wishes of its government and population. It's not a reality show, it's the real world.
US valuation levels are an entirely different reason not to want to be a US investor. But not a fatal one. First, this will pass: prices fluctuate. But more importantly, you never see *everything* overvalued. The valuation level of the broad US market is so high that the next N years will of necessity be poor: the same old stream of distant future earnings costs twice what it did not long ago, so you'll end up with half the future earnings for a portfolio starting today. But it's not a problem if you don't invest in the broad US market. I didn't before, and I don't now, so while valuation is a big red warning for indexers, it remains mostly irrelevant to me. I pick stuff that isn't plainly overvalued, no matter where it's based. Even if I were a die-hard US investor, I wouldn't own the S&P at these levels, but there are still lots of individual firms that are attractively priced.
In terms of geography and the attractiveness and hurdles of investing in Europe or elsewhere, the main difference isn't the lack of firms with good prospects, but information. For US equities it's just so much more available, and easily read and compared. As I mentioned, the European firms can't be all bad--I'm sure there are plenty of fine keepers. But it's starting from near zero by comparison in terms of my learning about them, so I don't know very many attractive ones well enough to risk serious money. Yet, anyway. Rationally speaking, I don't expect to be able to read enough to get the market beating results outside the US that I have managed in US equities. There are only so many days, and only so many years.
Jim
