Keeping Money at Home Can Be Costly for Investors
(Bloomberg Opinion) — Most investors don’t typically get the opportunity to emulate the strategies of the world’s biggest asset managers. The recent announcement that the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest with $1.1 trillion, wants to increase its allocation to North American stocks should be a wake-up call for equity holders who ignore overseas shares — with investors from one nation in particular needing to pay attention.

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The tendency for investors to allocate too much of their capital in their home markets is called domestic bias and is a well-known phenomenon. For U.K. investors who’ve stuck with indigenous equities in recent years, this proclivity has cost them dearly.
The U.K. investment industry manages about 8.5 trillion pounds ($11 trillion), more than three-quarters of which is on behalf of local customers, according to figures compiled by the Investment Association, a trade body. For the past five years, the