Apart from commodities and cash, the Bedokian way of diversification, if it is to be done, is from top to bottom: asset class, region/country and then to sector/industry. Some of you may be wondering, why the further diversification below asset class has to be in that order.
Region/Country
Generally, an asset class in a region or country will perform differently from another. For instance, the table below shows the stock market (i.e., mainly of equities asset class) returns of various countries between 2009 and 2023 (Figure 1):
Fig.1: International Stock Market Returns, 2009 to 2023. Source: Novel Investor (www.novelinvestor.com). Click to enlarge.
Looking at some years, we had the extreme case of 2015 where the Danish index gained 24.4% while the Canadian index dropped 23.6%. In the year 2018 which all indices were negative, the Finnish one was only down by 2.2% while the Austrian one suffered -27.1%.
The same goes for real estate investment trusts (REITs). According to data from NAREIT...