You're a Biased Investor
It never fails. I recently returned from a cruise vacation, and of course, standing out on deck watching whales, glaciers and the coastal terrain of Alaska drift past, the commentary among my little cluster of fellow passengers fell to, what else? The stock market, of course. But I noticed something in my chats. Someone would talk about all the usual FANG suspects (Facebook, Amazon and Apple, Netflix, and Google), or perhaps General Electric or IBM. You name it - all of them U.S. companies. But raise the idea of investing in Europe or Asia, where valuations are lower and stock prices cheaper? The good-natured silence spoke volumes. My cruise friends were displaying that most human of human investor traits - what financial types call "home country bias." An Unsurprising Trend Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) polled investors in various countries and found an unsurprising trend: Investors in a particular country love stocks within their own b