You always hear people saying, “Donno what to buy? Then just buy the market lor”.

But what exactly does buying the market mean? Do you even know what you are buying?

Without appreciating the underlying, things might end up like this Dilbert joke on diversification.

“It would be unwise to invest in just one sick cow, but if you aggregate a bunch of them together, the risk goes away.” – Dogbert

Source: http://dilbert.com/strip/2008-12-13

Jokes aside, indexing can still play a key part in our portfolios. Other than tracking the ‘market’, other reasons for investing in an index is for a diversified exposure to a certain country or region.

That said, do you know how major markets have performed in the past 10Y?

Well, let’s find out.

So How Has The Straits Times Index (“STI”) Done Compared To Other Markets?

Source: SGX Securities Market Performance Dec 2016

Interestingly, over ...