I think that I will get this thread started a little early, because it will give people the opportunity to contribute over the weekend.  Besides, it is a way to get your mind off of the market.  This is intended to be an ongoing thread that will be re-started every month like the T/A thread.  Hopefully, regulars and lurkers will come to this thread with their foreign investment questions. 

I thought about the use of the term "global" instead of "foreign"... the thread title uses both.  It is true that many domestic companies have a lot of foreign business and the popular theory is that there may be little difference between a Nestle and a Hershey or Kraft.  Perhaps that is something that we should discuss... I am not so sure that I am convinced.  Where are the taxes paid?  What currency are the corporate assets denominated in?  Who has the foreign understanding and better marketing and most history abroad?  I am sure it is hard to generalize... but I don't think that you can equate owning domestic international companies with having foreign investments... for some reason "global" seems to have a better connotation than "foreign", but I don't buy into connotations anyway.  I think that if your portfolio is going to be global, you need to buy foreign companies... many of which may not do any business in the US.   Comments?

I have really just one link to give you today HERE.  The MSCI link allows you to use the drop down menus to look at the stock market returns of global regions, individual countries, sectors in individual countries, and in 3 currencies (USD, Euros, and local currency).  By looking at historical returns in local currencies and comparing it to USD returns, you can see the impact of currency on foreign investments.  Also, note that you can sort the tables by clicking on the column headers for how you want it sorted.  I think this is a fantastic resource for exploring where the best returns are abroad.  I hope others will post good internet resources.

Another topic that I am sure we will have an opportunity to discuss is whether it is better to invest in a "diversified" foreign fund and let its manager decide where to invest (or index), or do it yourself.

I have put together a couple of tables that give you some references on how various foreign investments have been doing.  Sorry, I did this a few days ago, so don't take the numbers too literally.  The rankings have probably not changed a lot in the last few days.

 I will start with foreign bonds... certainly part of foreign investing.  The best fund so far this month is MERKX, which has a bit of gold in its portfolio.  This feature will probably cause it to be at the top or the bottom of the list, depending on how gold is doing.  I sorted by YTD return.  I was struck by the huge variaton in returns.  If someone can suggest additional funds or ETF's that I should add to the tables, please make suggestions and I will incorporate them.

Now, here is a listing of foreign equity funds that I had in my lists that I used to post on tthis forum.  (Sorry, it was just too much work and I couldn't keep them up.)  Note that this hasn't been a very good year for foreign funds, either.  Also, see the disparity between returns... in part due to the regional or sector focus.  Latin America and Canada have outperformed this year in no small part due to the energy component of their portfolios.