Source:DFA Australia Ltd
Here’s how a map of the world would look if you sized each country, not by land mass, but according to the relative weighting of its share market in a global context. The idea here is that in deciding where to invest around the world it is easy to be swayed by each country’s economic output, the size of its population or some other statistical measure or how much column space they get in the media. But the dimensions of the individual economies are often unrelated to the pool of investment opportunities in each country. That’s because capital tends to flow to the areas offering the greatest expected returns, after adjusting for risk.
The message from this slide is the need to maintain a disciplined, strategic approach to how you allocate your international assets and to base your decisions on the investment opportunity, not the size or importance of the economy. Of course, the investment world is in motion, and these proportions will change over time as capital flows to markets offering the most attractive returns.