Our International Investing platform provides investors with a large range of investment options, across global, regional & country-specific & thematic strategies. In this blog post, we provide our views on the major investment options that are available on the platform (based on the specific funds that we have shortlisted), to help you identify the options that are the most suited for your requirements.
While investing globally, it is very important to understand whether you are exposing yourself to estate duty risk (substantial part of your wealth being taken away in case of death). We accordingly provide the investment options with or without estate duty risk.
Equity Fund: Investment Options
Country View: US continues to be one of the most attractive global markets to invest in, primarily driven by large value creation in US tech stocks. Secular growth potential of US tech, keeps interest alive despite high volatility – US tech has recovered well since the beginning of the year. With inflation starting to come under control (though still above target levels), the interest rate cycle is close to peaking. While growth is likely to remain subdued this year, the longer-term value-creation dynamics of this market remain very strong.
Market View: Potential high risk-reward deep-value play in a high-growth & highly dynamic economy | Continued government & regulatory inteference in the capitalist system & companies is a key risk | Chinese economic recovery remains elusive | 2024 GDP growth target of “around 5%”, is similar to the 2023 growth rate. However, new measures by the Chinese central bank to support the real estate sector gave a fresh boost to the Chinese recovery argument.
Market View: Asia remains an attractive market, in terms of a balance between valuations & growth. Most of the currency depreciation and economic slowdown is already priced in these markets. As inflation cools off and Fed rates peak, we expect these markets to show a recovery. These are also heavily export-oriented economies, so the eventual normalization of the global economy bodes well for them.
Market View: While our preferred approach is to control country exposures while constructing investor portfolios, thematic global funds can have a lot of value (since they can move investments across regions based on where you get the best exposure to the underlying theme).
Market View: Emerging market funds should have the potential to outperform DM & Global funds, due to the higher underlying growth of these economies. With Russia & Brazil continuing to dissapoint on economic growth, many of these funds have pivoted towards a higher weightage to the Asia region (including China & India). The neutral stance is more driven by most of our investors having large existing Indian allocations, and our not wanting to replicate existing portfolios. Otherwise this is an attractive fund class to be investing in.
Market View: Despite weak economic growth, Europe continues to have some very high quality companies servicing global demand in the consumer (luxury), manufacturing & pharma segments.
Investment View: Thematic equity funds are an interesting asset class, that provide investors an ability to participate directly in the value-creation of specific interesting themes.
Other Investment Options
The United States is the largest debt market globally, and a combination of the strength of the US economy and the fact that the dollar is the global reserve currency (effectively making it much easier for the US to print it’s way out of any soveriegn debt issues), makes this the most popular option for investors seeking global fixed income exposures. Most of our recommendations are focused on fixed income funds lending either to the US treasury or US corporates, but there is also an Asia based high-yield option that we recommend.
Within unlisted investing, our platform provides you access to some of the most marquee private equity funds, across different stages of the fund-raise/business maturity cycle. This includes
- Seed Funds: investing in some very attractive global growth themes
- Growth Funds: at both VC & PE stages of funding
- LBO Funds: that invest in mature companies via an LBO structure
There are a wide range of investment fund options within the Alternatives space, with a return profile that is very different from traditional asset classes (like debt or equity). These funds accordingly have strong portfolio diversification benefits for investors.
The range of Alternative Funds include
- Multi-Asset Funds: Conservative Hybrid Funds, Dynamic Asset Allocation Funds, Fund of Funds of Disparate Absolute-return focused strategies
- Long-Short Funds: include funds with an absolute return focus (market-neutral strategies) to long-short funds that are taking active calls & positions based on market views
- Life-Settlement Funds: a very attractive asset class from a diversification perspective. Life Settlement Funds invest in a pool of life insurance policies, and offer attractive potential double digital returns that are not linked to any other asset class