Thornburg Portfolio Manager Brian Burrell draws a parallel between the Olympics and portfolio investing.
The Analogy of the Olympics and International Investing
The 2024 Olympic Games recently kicked off in Paris. I think the diversity of medal winners is an analog to international stock investing. In fact, 93 countries were awarded medals at the 2020 Olympic Games. The United States brought home the most medals in 2020 with a total of 113 in six different categories. In 27 other categories, 15 different countries brought home more medals than the US.
The dispersion of Olympic medals can look a lot like a well-diversified stock portfolio.
At the end of the second quarter of 2024 72% of the MSCI World Index was composed of us companies That may be too U.S.-heavy. We feel the composition of global market winners could look a lot more like the Olympic medal count and less like today’s global market index.
Searching the globe beyond the US for investment opportunities has historically been a great way to go for gold in areas where us markets aren’t able to execute the investment equivalent of a triple twisting, double tucked, salto backwards. Wow, she’s good.