Primer On International Investing - Part I

Market capitalization is simply the total dollar value of all of a company’s outstanding shares of stock. It is often referred to as market cap for short. You can calculate market cap for a company by taking the current market price for a share of stock and multiplying it by the number of shares outstanding for that company. The size of a company is often measured by market capitalization and the media is routinely fascinated by which company currently has the highest market cap.

By Jim Pyke:Small capitalization stocks are often seen as providing two major benefits: diversification and greater returns. This article will focus on small capitalization ETFs from around the world to see if they do provide these benefits. This review will not be exhaustive since there are countless small capitalization ETFs, let alone the additional funds and individual securities that a casual investor can use. The following ETFs were considered: Select ETFs

By David Hunkar: Diversification helps reduce risk and volatility of a portfolio. Some investors falsely assume that diversification eliminates risks altogether. This is not true. Diversification only helps to reduces risk but not eliminate it. For example, a well-diversified portfolio of stocks may fall 15% when the market falls 20% or 25%. In a major market crash such as the one we saw in 2008-09, diversification would have helped a portfolio from a complete wipe-out.

By Guraaf: Introduction I am a US-resident dividend-yield and dividend-growth investor. Most of my current holdings are U.S. companies but over the last couple of years, I have diversified into foreign equities. I do not restrict myself to only U.S. companies and feel that in the future the high-level of U.S. debt may come to haunt the U.S. financial system.

Stanley Fischer, who cost his central bank a lot of money with his ill-timed bet to invest billions of the Bank of Israel's foreign  currency reserves on names such as Apple last year, has demonstrated that Einstein's definition of insanity is alive and well when it comes to central-planners, has just decided to double down on stocks. Alas, this is not a joke.

By Guraaf: << Return to Part I

By Value Research:In 2008, my MBA classmates and I researched Jim Cramer’s stock picks and found the following:

Michael Albert submits: It appears that the way to have performed this year in an otherwise flat stock market was to answer the question of whether the “risk-on” or “risk-off” trade was occurring. The risk-on trade is primarily focused around the broad U.S. Stock Market (primarily the S&P 500 and its related ETF (SPY), but also includes commodities and real estate.