Initially Printed In Moneycontrol
In September 2024, I flew to Dubai to judge the wealth administration alternative there for our agency. What I discovered was exhausting to argue with. Prosperous households are relocating in critical numbers. A metropolis the place East meets West, the place international capital feels genuinely at house. We opened our workplace there shortly after.
I’m penning this in early 2026, with the Center East in a state that no person who moved to Dubai, and plenty of very good individuals did, totally accounted for. The protected haven picture that made Dubai so engaging is being stress-tested in methods which can be making a few of these assured choices look bewildered. Individuals who concentrated vital wealth in Dubai actual property at the moment are pondering of how to diversify as the actual property costs are falling.
I take into consideration Indian traders in precisely the identical breath.
India’s fairness story is actual. I’m not right here to argue in any other case. SIP inflows at file highs, mutual fund AUM previous Rs 80 lakh crore (as of February 2026), a quickly rising retail investor base – these are usually not small issues. India is anticipated to develop at 6-7 % over the approaching years. However here’s what I hold coming again to: India represents roughly 3.6 % of world fairness market capitalisation. The US alone is over 60 %. An investor who stays solely inside Indian markets has, by alternative or by default, excluded over 96 % of the world’s public fairness investable belongings.
That isn’t warning. That could be a structural blind spot.
Of the highest 500 firms globally by income, 9 are from India. The companies reshaping international wealth proper now, in AI infrastructure, superior semiconductors, hyperscale cloud, and many others., don’t exist in Indian indices. They’re merely not there to personal.
After which there may be the demographic argument, which I’ve monumental respect for however discover more and more inadequate by itself. AI-driven automation might alter the connection between workforce measurement and financial output in methods we’ve got not but totally understood. A demographic dividend in a labour-intensive financial system is one factor. What it turns into in an AI-augmented one is a genuinely open query. I’m not making a bearish name on India. I’m saying that no single progress thesis, not India’s, not Dubai’s, not anybody’s, is foolproof in a extremely unsure macroeconomic scenario the place international dynamics are reshaping and realigning. The fast change in energy equations, leverage, and friendships primarily based on financial conveniences makes it tough to think about the winners and losers of tomorrow.
Subsequently, simply being hopeful is just not a method.
The information from the final two years is value sitting with. The S&P 500 returned 25 % in 2024 and 18 % in 2025. Gold, which most Indian traders are underweight in digital kind, rose 27 % in 2024 after which over 67 % in 2025, its strongest annual efficiency since 1979. Singapore’s Straits Occasions Index delivered a complete return of 29 % in 2025. Copper hit an all-time excessive of over $13,000 per tonne by year-end 2025, its largest annual achieve since 2009, underpinned by structural demand from AI infrastructure buildout and the power transition.
India’s Nifty 50, over the identical two years, delivered a CAGR of roughly 9.6 % – closing 2024 at 8.8 % and 2025 at 10.5 %.
Respectable. And nowhere shut.
The longer file is even much less forgiving. The Nifty 200 TRI underperformed the S&P 500 TRI in 11 out of 15 calendar years from 2011 to 2025. The emerging-market progress premium, the concept sooner financial progress produces higher fairness returns, merely has not proven up constantly within the numbers.
There’s additionally the rupee, which not often options in how individuals calculate their returns however completely ought to. The INR fell roughly 3 % in opposition to the greenback in 2024 and one other 5 % in 2025, touching Rs 90.95 in December – a file low. As of mid-March 2026, it sits close to Rs 94, with oil costs including recent stress. The rupee has been on a constant long-term weakening pattern, which isn’t a current anomaly. Gold’s 67 % USD achieve in 2025 translated into one thing increased nonetheless for the Indian investor who owned it.
International markets normally don’t transfer in sync. That’s the level. Totally different financial cycles, totally different sector compositions, totally different political rhythms. When one geography is underneath stress, one other usually is just not. A structured, globally diversified portfolio is just not constructed on the hope that the whole lot goes up collectively. It’s constructed on the understanding that the whole lot is not going to go down collectively both.
The world we’ve got seen in the previous few a long time is just not going to be the world we’ll see within the subsequent few.
The query that follows naturally is: how does an Indian investor truly entry any of this – gold, semiconductors, worth shares, dividend-paying equities throughout geographies – with out choosing particular person shares in markets they don’t perceive?
The reply, most often, is a portfolio of world ETFs.
ETFs supply a degree of transparency that issues when investing exterior acquainted markets. Holdings are disclosed every day and priced in actual time; you realize precisely what you personal, at what value, at any second.
There’s additionally the query of entry to themes that merely don’t exist in India. A semiconductor ETF provides publicity to the businesses manufacturing the chips that energy AI, NVIDIA’s provide chain, Taiwan’s foundries, and your entire ecosystem of a expertise cycle that India’s listed markets can not replicate. Clear power, superior healthcare, uncommon earth supplies, China’s expertise restoration – every of those is accessible in a single commerce, with out the single-stock danger of making an attempt to select winners in unfamiliar markets.
Indian traders can entry international ETFs by way of direct overseas brokerage accounts through the RBI’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme at as much as USD 250,000 per 12 months, or by way of GIFT Metropolis’s IFSC framework for INR-accessible USD publicity.
One tax level value noting: International ETFs require a 24-month holding interval to qualify for long-term capital features therapy, versus 12 months for home fairness investments. International investing, carried out correctly, is just not a commerce however a long-horizon allocation.
The case for India’s long-term progress is actual, and no person ought to dismiss it. The case for worldwide diversification is way less complicated: in a world the place AI is redrawing the foundations of financial progress, the place geopolitical shifts arrive with out warning, and the place probably the most vital return alternatives of the final two years have been concentrated in belongings and markets many Indian traders by no means touched – why would you restrict your self to at least one geography?
Focus is just not conviction more often than not. It’s the absence of a method.
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Content material shared is for instructional functions solely and shouldn’t be thought-about funding recommendation. All investments are topic to market dangers. Previous efficiency is just not indicative of future returns.