Tuesday, January 23, 2007

A Small Step Towards Greater Diversification

My review of my asset allocation lead to the conclusion that I was overweight real estate and underweight most other asset classes.

I have taken a small step to rectify the situation by investing in a Vietnam equity fund. Vietnam is an emerging market that is several years behind many of the the other Asian success stories such as China and India but is beginning to open up to foreign investors as it slowly moves towards economic liberalisation. The other major attraction that Vietnam offers is its demographic profile - it is a very young country.

As with all emerging markets, some ups and downs can be expected and transaction costs will be higher than for more developed markets. Accordingly, this has to be viewed as a long term investment. I anticipate holding this investment for at least five years and potentially for much longer.

2 comments:

L. Marie Joseph said...

Vietnam equity fund - very smart move !

It's always best to invest while the country is still emerging.

A lot of people talk about BRIC ( Brazil, China, Russia and India) as emerging markets.

But Japan and Vietnam are also on the rise.

Once again very smart move!

traineeinvestor said...

Thanks for the feed back. I still have a lot of confidence in emerging markets generally - but expect it to be a bumpy ride.