Diversification is one of the cardinal rules of investing that you can't afford to flout if you want to protect your investment portfolio from unpleasant surprises. Telling you not to put all your eggs in one basket already sounds cliché and most smart investors will have a mix of conservative and speculative investments in their portfolios.
Many investors diversify their portfolios across stocks, mutual funds, precious metals, bonds, and forex. Others investors diversify across multiple areas of the economy and some investors diversify across multiple sectors of the same industry. For a dividend investor, diversifying your portfolio across national borders is one of the smartest ways to enhance your dividend profile. This piece examines 3 reasons why investing abroad in dividend yielding stocks is a smart diversification move.
Access to different market cycles
The economic reality is that different economies operate on different market cycles. A global recession or bull run will have varying effects along a spectrum on different economies. Even in the best/worst economic times, some countries will get in/out faster than the others. Investing in dividend yielding stocks abroad provides you with an opportunity to access massive dividend payouts especially in emerging economies where a rising middle class often trigger bullish sentiments for stocks prices, earnings and dividends.
If you focus only on investing in companies in your home economy, you'll most likely be recording massive opportunity cost in the international markets.
Diversification away from the U.S. dollar
The U.S. dollar is de facto global reserve currency but the greenback is gradually losing its position as other economies continue to challenge the economic dominance of the U.S. In addition, some of the unconventional economic policies (and statements) of President Trump are Dollar-negative and the greenback is experiencing an unprecedented level of volatility, Investing in dividend stocks abroad provides an window for receiving your dividends payouts in other currencies such as the Euro, Pounds, Yen, CAD, and Yuan among others.
Of course, one could make a counter argument that investing abroad to diversify away from the USD might not make much difference because of FX fees relating to transferring your money abroad and collecting your dividends from a foreign currency back to the USD. However, the good news is that international money transfers are no longer in the exclusive domains of banks. Now, you can find tons of international payments options to send and collect money outside the country at fair, reasonable, and competitive prices.
Access to international credit
Apart from the fact that investing in dividend stocks abroad helps you to book gains from bigger markets and it protects your portfolio against economic shocks, international investing can also be a great tool for extending your creditworthiness beyond national boundaries. You can easily access a broader credit base in the countries where you have significant investments.
Investors who only have portfolios locally are often at a loss when credit is unavailable or expensive in their local markets – the worst part is that lenders reserve the right to approve/deny credit applications. However, you can easily send it a credit application to a lender in another country and use the investment portfolio as the basis of an existing relationship for the credit facility.
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