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Comment by slaw | Hacker News Reader

Past performance is not indicative of future results. Japan stock market JP225 didn't recover yet from 1990 crash.

Do Japanese people have to buy Japanese stocks just because it's the same country?

No, Japanese can invest in other markets using international brokers. I don't know details on the fees and currency conversions. Investing in a foreign exchange is always at a slight disadvantage because of currency conversions and fees.

For a US centric view: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032615/how-t...

US stocks are traded on foreign exchanges. Even if you insist on buying on a US exchange, the currency conversion is not very expensive. If you're a buy and hold investor, it won't matter at all.

And yet you often see US people recommending to buy US stocks. There are risks and benefits to buying both domestic and international stocks.

If you invested only in the Nikkei on the way up and on the way down, you still came out fine. The only person who didn’t is the person who put all of their savings in at the very top and never bought again.

Yea so buy land if you’re so paranoid about becoming Japan. It’s an island nation with a very unique history. Not a great counterpoint to current US and global economics.

The UK is at more or less the same price as it was in 2000. France same as 2008. Meanwhile SPY is up 2.75x in that period. The US seems to be the anomaly. Value doesn’t always go higher. Maybe the USA is special, maybe not.

SPY is differently weighted than for example FTSE. Most indexes do not factor in dividends, if you look at the total return data where dividends are reinvested you will see there are gains in Europe, but less than the US.

Thanks, I hadn’t realised the “obvious” indexes were measuring different things

Is that with dividends? Watch out because the German DAX actually does have reinvestment in it iirc. Most of the others don't.

An index never includes dividends. An index fond might (accumulating) or might not (distributing).

https://personal-financial.com/2020/11/27/the-dax-and-its-di...

Thanks. Learned something today.

The UK FTSE all share total return index, which accounts for reinvested dividends, is at 8430 today and was at 2870 in May 2000. That's an annualized return of exactly 5%/year

I'd wager most of that difference is due to the USA's tech industry growth.

Thanks for pointing out dividend adjustments work differently on some indexes

Adjusted for dividends since 2012

VUKE - Vanguard UK 100 up 100% VUSA - Vanguard S&P500 up 350%

As the saying goes, there are four types of economies: developed, undeveloped, Argentina, and Japan.

Why Argentina?

Argentina's economy is a series of endless crises from the government choosing the worst possible ways to intervene in it at every opportunity. Like a reverse South Korea.

Buying land in Japan isn't a great idea (except to live on it). You have to pay a hefty annual tax on it. Land even with property on it is so often abandoned they have a word for it and many marketplaces where you can buy abandoned land from the tax office.

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