Let your money travel the world: Why global diversification is no longer optional

As global markets become more accessible than ever, the case for looking beyond domestic investments is growing stronger.

Industry leaders believe that in an increasingly interconnected world, investors can no longer afford to remain confined to their home markets.

Speaking on the sidelines of GSMC 2.0 in GIFT City, Subho Moulik, CEO & Founder of Appreciate and Tony Petrilli, CEO & Founder of ViewTrade highlighted how technology, fractional investing, and evolving market infrastructure are enabling retail investors to participate in global opportunities with ease.


Their message was clear: in a world where wealth is being created across geographies, letting your money “travel the world” is no longer a choice, it is a necessity for better diversification, risk management, and long-term wealth creation. Edited Excerpts –

Kshitij Anand: Tony, let me start off with you. You have seen decades, and you have seen how the infrastructure has evolved from institutions to retail. If you can sum up the whole story in your own words.
Tony Petrilli: To sum up 40 years of history—no, I mean, true, when I started in this industry in the 1980s at Morgan Stanley, I was assigned to the international desk because it was the smallest desk at the firm. I was young, and they said, “Start here, Tony.” It turned out to be the best place to be, because my whole career now has been doing cross-border and international business.

Yes, institutions have always had access to global markets. It used to be extremely expensive to trade globally and very difficult to move money and so forth. You had to have a different custodian, a different broker, and a different bank. It was very hard to do.

That has now come full circle to today, where firms like us and Appreciate are able to give you access to worldwide markets through a single account, with the click of a button. You don’t have to worry about the complexity—we take care of that for you. You just put your money to work.

And I think, quite frankly, what is driving that is retail participation. What is beautiful about today’s world and technology is that it has really allowed us to do this, along with cooperative regulators and other factors. But this notion that I can earn my money where I live, and create my wealth wherever wealth is created—it doesn’t have to be where I live. It could be anywhere in the world—and that, I think, is one of the things that attracts retail investors. You can make your money on other people’s efforts where they live and participate.

Kshitij Anand: And in fact, that’s a very nice point you have highlighted—that your money can work elsewhere. You do not have to live where you make your money. Your money can work for you everywhere.
Tony Petrilli: On other people’s efforts, where they live, essentially.

Kshitij Anand: Very nice thought there, Tony. And let me also add one bit to it: the US has always been structurally very powerful, or in a dominant position, especially when it comes to global investing. Is it because of the liquidity or the technology that is there?
Tony Petrilli: Yes, I mean, look—if you look around the world, we operate in 32 countries and execute trades in 22 different markets. Every market has some unique aspect to it.

If you look at certain markets in Europe, for instance, they are heavily dominated by financial services. Other countries may be dominated by industrials, while others by materials, like Latin America and similar regions.

The US, however, has—over the last 20–30 years—been dominated by technology. Technology is a major part of the US market. I think it represents probably 50% of the S&P 500 if you truly look at it from a technology standpoint.

So, if you are interested in technology, if technology is driving growth, and if technology is where wealth is being created, the US naturally attracts those assets.

Kshitij Anand: Subho, let me come to you as well. A similar question—can we say that US markets can actually solve the problem of diversification on their own, or does it make sense to diversify into other global markets as well?
Subho Moulik: Look, I think it makes a lot of sense to diversify, period. If you look at the average non-Indian composition of today’s retail investor’s portfolio, it is zero point something percent on average. Now, there are some people allocating 40%, some 30%, but the vast majority are allocating zero percent.

So, let us start with diversification first. If your family is here, your job is here, your house is here, and your other assets are here, it makes a lot of sense to move some allocation to a blue-chip market like the US. The US is also a gateway market to other markets because of the prime position it plays today, along with the dollar as a reserve currency.

So, let us begin by helping people understand that there are significant diversification benefits—risk reduction, access to higher returns, exposure to industries that are doing well, and lower correlation, as India and the US have become less and less correlated over time. And of course, let us not forget currency diversification, because I think over the next decade you are going to see the USD appreciating versus the INR, given the way inflation and interest rates are trending.

Moving on to diversification. Once you achieve initial diversification, you can always look at additional markets. But remember—and I think this will be true for at least the next half-decade, probably longer—the US will continue to influence, I believe, 80%+ share of global capital markets. Therefore, it is a no-brainer to start there, and then you can add more niche holdings to your portfolio.

Tony Petrilli: I think what you are saying is right. If you really look at global equity markets, to your point, if you just want to match how the world allocates capital—because that is what the US represents, about 60–70% of global capital—you should align your allocation accordingly.

If the world has already decided this is where capital should be allocated, why not, as a retail investor, take advantage of all that collective expertise from institutions and consider doing the same—and even better? Because the advantage retail investors have is that they do not need to invest in large sizes like institutions. They can be much more nimble and pick specific parts of the market. So, they can potentially generate improved performance versus larger institutions.

Subho Moulik: And because change is hard, move from 0 to 20–30%. If you suddenly say, “Oh my God, 70% of my portfolio should be abroad,” I think that is a bridge too far for many people.

But increasingly, even in India, if you look at the narrative from investment advisors, it has fundamentally shifted from saying India is the only market you should invest in—which, by the way, should not be the case for anyone. You should not say, “I will only invest in one stock, one sector, or one market.” You should be diversified because you do not know when the next black swan event is coming, and diversified portfolios tend to perform much better on the downside in such situations.

Kshitij Anand: In fact, a similar thought emerged when mutual funds came into the picture, and nobody thought we would see Rs 31,000 crore in AUM—or rather Rs 31,000 crore in SIP investments—every month. A similar story could actually play out in global investing.
Subho Moulik: Exactly. That is what I am saying. There are increasing geopolitical forces that are going to limit—whether you agree with it or not—people movement. However, money moves much more easily. So, if you cannot go and work in the US…

Kshitij Anand: Before decisions, money moves…
Subho Moulik: …or travel to the US, at least let your money visit and work for you so that it opens up more doors. I think it is time that Indians became owners. Because as an owner—imagine if you had 15% ownership in a blue-chip tech company with Indian participation—you are going to see a very different dialogue around that.

We are also set to become one of the largest AI consumption markets, especially in use cases that do not necessarily displace workforces. So, there is significant value in being owners.

Kshitij Anand: Let us talk a little about how technology is evolving, Tony. We have seen tokenization—many innovations originate in the US and then spread globally. Infrastructure is evolving. From your vantage point, do you see more room for progress, especially for retail investors in India?
Tony Petrilli: Yes. First, I would say not every innovation comes from the US—India has some very strong developments happening as well.

Technology is the key driver that enables global access at scale and at a cost that does not break the bank. That will continue to evolve. Yes, we can talk about future states—tokenization, AI—but in my experience over 40 years, every year brings innovation. Every year, something new gets created.

To me, it is a natural progression rather than something overly revolutionary. It simply provides new ways of doing things. The real value of these innovations is in eliminating the remaining friction in cross-border movement—whether it is the movement of money or securities on a blockchain.

We are already at T+1 settlement. Money can move in one day, sometimes even the same day. Now we are moving toward a world where transactions can happen almost instantly. So, it is more about efficiency than anything else.

At the end of the day, investing is still investing. As you said, let your money visit the world. I like to call it “investment tourism”—explore global opportunities, understand what is happening across markets. The future of technology will simply make this faster and easier, but it will not change the fundamental principles of identifying investment opportunities worldwide.

Kshitij Anand: Let us also talk about this—we have seen what is evolving, but I am sure there must be certain technological aspects that help in democratising global investing. What would those be? Is it fractional investing or something else?
Tony Petrilli: Oh yes, definitely. Fractional investing has opened things up to everybody because now you invest notionally. The reality is, if you are managing money—one of my other businesses is an advisory business—I do not think about how many shares of a stock I own. No real investor thinks that way. When I say “real investor,” I mean institutions.

They think in terms of allocation—how much do you want allocated to a particular opportunity or geography? So, when you talk about diversification, it is about what percentage of your money is invested, not how many shares you hold.

What fractionalization allows you to do is think in terms of allocation: I want to put 10% of my money here, 5% there. You do not even think about the stock price or the number of shares. You simply say, “Give me $10 worth of this stock,” even if it is priced at $300, $400, or $500.

You could not do that before fractionalization—it simply was not possible. But now, you can allocate even $10 to a stock that is priced at $300 or $500.

Subho Moulik: Let me give you an example. Berkshire Hathaway is trading at around $720,000 and change. An individual investor who wants to buy even one share would think, “I need to sell a house or multiple assets.”

But today, because of platforms like ViewTrade and Appreciate partnering together, you can enter that stock with $70–80, or even $10. So basically, what you are saying is that access has significantly improved.

The other thing happening is that if you go back to the literature—and Tony will vouch for this—home bias used to be a real phenomenon. Economists and practitioners both observed it.

What has changed now is that your home bias has shifted from the country you live in to the apps you use. Whether you are on Android or iPhone, you get your screen time report—mine was nine hours yesterday, unfortunately. On my phone, I am looking at YouTube, Google, and WhatsApp.

When you look at that, my home bias is now my digital footprint, and much of that involves companies outside India. Information is easily accessible. So, the way we live has fundamentally changed.

Earlier, when Blockbuster was a video cassette store, it was impossible for it to expand into India. But Netflix came to India easily because all you had to do was install an app. So, this shift in home bias is a silent revolution enabled by technological progress.

Kshitij Anand: Now that we are talking about technology, how can we not talk about AI? How do you see the next few years evolving for global portfolios? Will there be more personalization?
Subho Moulik: I think the biggest topic people are discussing and worrying about is whether the AI boom will crash immediately, or whether it will not crash but lead to broader economic issues in a couple of years.

In my view, there is likely to be a soft landing for AI, primarily because it has real use cases, and also because governments are likely to intervene before things go out of control.

So, the question then becomes: as an individual investor, when do I enter or exit AI? I think it is very difficult to time the market effectively. As an individual investor, you have to bet on themes.

In terms of AI in investing, you will see much more personalization. Tony and I were discussing this—you will see far more customization. Even today, there are studies comparing a monkey throwing darts to select stocks versus the bottom decile of fund managers—and sometimes the monkey wins.

You will increasingly see technology-driven portfolio management and fund management—driven not just by AI but also machine learning and other models. This will fundamentally change access and enable hyper-customized portfolios. More power to investors.

Tony Petrilli: Yes, AI covers a lot of areas, but in the context of investing, what I hope to see is AI being used to discover stocks across the world. If you think about it, there are around 35,000 stocks globally. Do you even know 10% of them?

Kshitij Anand: Absolutely not.
Tony Petrilli: And that is the case. I know when we started the firm, we worked with our clients in Singapore and elsewhere. Their portfolios consisted—let us say they had a billion dollars worth of stocks—of just three stocks, because that is all people knew. We helped open that up by providing more information.

So, what I am hoping AI does is actually reduce volatility in the market. What tends to happen today is that people know a limited number of stocks, and those stocks get crowded. Everyone goes in, and then everyone goes out, leading to volatility that can look scary.

What I am hoping with AI is that these tools will allow you to access information from around the world, identify opportunities you would never find on your own—it would be impossible to do it manually the old way. Capital will be spread across many more opportunities.

So, instead of having a portfolio of seven stocks, you might have 300. And you will know each one and understand the details because AI will bring that information to you. That is what I am hoping happens—and what I hope we can work on together—because that would be exciting for me.

The crowded markets of today are the reason for extreme volatility. When I started in this business, you did not see 7%, 8%, 10%, or 20% moves in a stock—it just did not happen.

Subho Moulik: That is why you had circuit breakers.

Tony Petrilli: Not only that, but if a trader caused that to happen, he would be fired. When I was at Morgan Stanley, the trader who could execute a million shares without moving the market even a penny was highly rewarded. The one who moved or crashed the market—well, he would be shown the door.

So, I am hoping that with AI, we will see much more diversified portfolios. Volatility should come down, and returns could improve. AI can be a very powerful tool in investing if used in that context.

Subho Moulik: And I will add one more point—I actually believe Tony’s expectation is not just hope; I think it will happen. The real questions are how and who. The “when” is not in doubt—it is actually around the corner, not five years away.

Kshitij Anand: No, absolutely. The kind of speed at which things are moving...
Subho Moulik: So, I think this is going to be a huge investor empowerment moment.

Tony Petrilli: And when I say “hope,” I do not mean uncertainty—I believe it will happen. What I mean is, I hope AI is not used merely to trade faster—like making money in a microsecond instead of slightly longer.

Subho Moulik: If you look at it philosophically, many AI use cases are around defence—how to kill people—not the most inspiring application. Or around eliminating jobs—efficient, yes, but not always socially inspiring.

But investing is a rare win-win use case. No one needs to lose a job, no one gets harmed. Investors benefit, markets benefit, companies benefit. If you evaluate AI applications based on what is socially and financially beneficial, investing would rank right at the top.

Kshitij Anand: More information and more power to investors, as you said earlier.
Subho Moulik: And more power, along with better capital availability for markets.

Tony Petrilli: Why do people not invest? Because they lack information or confidence. AI will bring that information and confidence, enabling more informed decisions—whether to invest or not. It will expand access to global securities, which is great for individuals, markets, and society as a whole.

Kshitij Anand: We have discussed how technology has evolved over the past decade, but let us think ahead—five years down the line, how do you see global diversification shaping up?
Tony Petrilli: I think we have already touched on it. AI will help identify opportunities globally, leading to much more diversified portfolios based on improved information flow.

As this happens, markets will start to feel more like long-term investment platforms rather than speculative trading arenas. Today, markets sometimes feel volatile or even rigged to some participants. There are 20–30 different types of participants in any given security, each with different objectives.

But I see retail investors becoming a more dominant force, while institutional dominance may reduce. In fact, institutions are already beginning to follow retail trends in some ways, which was not the case earlier.

As global participation increases and more investors focus on wealth creation rather than short-term trading, markets will become more stable and more interesting for everyone over the next five years.

Kshitij Anand: A similar question to you, Subho—closing thoughts on that.
Subho Moulik: So, I think history tells us what is going to happen in the future in this case, because the overarching themes are better access for retail investors and more complex products being simplified so that retail investors can access them.

As retail participation scales, the ability for costs to come down improves, along with the ability to create innovative combinations and complex portfolios. Since an individual investor cannot construct these on their own, there is a growing need for advisory.

What you are seeing now—and we see this in India—is that fixed deposits used to be the gold standard for investment. But people are now saying, “I do not want a product with a negative real rate of return. I want my money to actually earn for me.”

So, investors are moving away from static yields toward dynamic return products. I think their appetite for complex products, when made simple for them, will continue to increase as access to information grows.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views, and opinions given by experts are their own. These do not represent the views of The Economic Times)