Mason Investment Advisory Services hosted investment directors from Capital Group, the management company behind the American Funds, for a discussion of recent trends and promising opportunities in international markets.
The session is the latest in a series of Mason educational events designed to highlight key factors affecting the construction and monitoring of client portfolios.
Capital Group manages over $2 trillion and has been a leader in international investing for over 70 years. In fact, Capital Group was one of the first US based firms to invest outside the US and is credited with creating the first ever set of stock market indices for non-US markets.
Mason advisors opened the session with a question about currencies, the recent weakening of the dollar, and the impact these fluctuations will have for markets overseas.
Developed market specialist, Emily Liao and emerging markets specialist Kent Chan both pointed to an important long-term shift toward the strengthening of foreign currencies, which in turn signaled a burgeoning extended period of strength in both developed and emerging market investments.
Emily Liao further underscored the attractiveness of international markets pointing out the breadth and diversity of investment opportunities beyond our shores.
Where gains at home have been concentrated in a few large tech and tech-adjacent companies, sector expansion overseas has been much more widely distributed with some sectors enjoying especially healthy gains in particular countries.
In response to a question about the impact of our decoupling with China, Kent Chan pointed to the growing opportunities in international small cap companies particularly in sectors involving advanced technologies.
As countries reorder their supply chains and turn inward for R&D, the opportunities for home grown start-ups to advance technologies and develop new products domestically will increase substantially as will opportunities for international small cap investors.
From there the discussion ranged from which sectors are attractive in the developed economies around the world to the significance of cryptocurrencies to international markets.
By the end of the lively two+ hour session, participants generally agreed that their views of international markets were enriched by the insights and analysis shared by Capital Group and that allocations to international investments continued to play an important role in a diversified long-term portfolio.
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