How Jeff D. Opdyke became a successful international investor is an Everyman tale that began thirteen years ago when he discarded conventional wisdom. At the time, Wall Street’s pros insisted that average investors buy domestic mutual funds that invest overseas. But Jeff ignored their tepid advice. Instead, he opted for the intrepid, opening bank and brokerage accounts from New Zealand to Hong Kong in order to buy the local stocks he wanted to own, not those that some fund manager deemed worthy.
If your portfolio is tied up solely in American stocks, you're missing out, warns journalist Opdyke. In this lucid investment guide, he advises average investors to bypass Wall Street, avoid domestically held Exchange Traded Funds and American Depository Receipts, and to put their money to work directly in foreign economies. More than 320 of the Fortune Global 500 are based outside the U.S., and tens of thousands of smaller companies never show up on the radar back in America, but afford American investors a host of opportunities for growth, diversification, risk reduction and richer returns. Opdyke offers panoptic investment advice from finding overseas brokerage firms and picking promising stocks to funding accounts and handling tax issues. The author masterfully condenses a daunting amount of information and presents useful crash courses on how currency works and the differences between developed, emerging and frontier markets, concluding with a detailed portrait of China's investment potential. Comprehensive and inspiring, with a strong, assured voice, Opdyke's book is a must for would-be overseas investors.
