Pondering a new strategy where I will ramp up the risk on the stock side and compensate for that with more treasuries/tips/commodities. Thinking about a target of 30% emerging market, 35% developed international, 35% domestic. Over time, developed international slice will go down because I can’t contribute enough to my Roth IRA for my international ETFs to keep up. I suspect after a few years, it’ll look like 30% emerging market, 20% developed international, 50% domestic.

So, that leaves her Roth, my Roth, and my 403b…
So, I have Index ETFs inside my Roth and her Roth… S&P 500 for her, Vanguard Total market for me..

That leaves my 403b… and here’s where I get a little aggressive…
I have 40% international, 30% small cap, and 30% Reit…

So, I’m conservative w/ the Roths and aggressive w/ the 403b…
NCN

Currency risk is a real issue with international investments, as other commenters have point out. There is something to be said for having the bulk of your assets in the same currency as your financial obligations.

I would also like to say that although I am I a big proponent of international diversification, the diversification benefits of international investments have been diminishing in recent decades. International stock markets have become much more tightly correlated these days. When one sizeable market sneases the global equity markets tend to catch a cold. Having said this, considerable diversification benefit is still there.

Another interest thing I was researching was to invest in International FIXED investments. In my home country, they’re giving 10% FIXED rates.
This rate, plus the continually loss in dollar value, would give me a return of maybe 12% fixed.

Of course, if the dollar turns around (which I don’t think will happen anytime soon), then my 10% would become more like 6-8%. Which is still a good return.

I’m still researching how to do this. Countries don’t like when you invest money to spend it elsewhere. They would like you to spend it where you invested it.

You could put your money in currencies and banks overseas as you mention, but the minimums are high ($20K as you mentioned), and I haven’t done the research to know if it’s got the equivalent of FDIC insurance.

This is why I suggest the simplest thing, investing in foreign mutual funds or ETFs. People already know how to do this, it’s just putting a different ticker symbol into their online broker, shifting some money in your 401k, etc. That’s the quickest and easy way, in my opinion.

About 10 months ago I started researching Indian and Chinese ADRs to invest in. I used the lists from ADR.com and plugged my top picks into a watchlist on my brokers site with a hypothetical $250 investment in each stock. While monitoring the watchlist and importing Google news feeds into my RSS reader I purchased a half dozen of these.

In India I invested in two of the top banks because of the record amount of loans being handed out over there. I also picked an information technology services company.

In China, I picked a car company that will be making big moves in importing automobiles to the rest of the world in the next few years. My next was one of the top cellphone providers. And to cash in on the upcoming summer Olympic games, I bought one of the top airlines, and after that an Orbitz-type flight and hotel booking site. My last pick was the top China based search engine, which I bought after it has doubled in price in the past 4 months. Only 20% of Chinese are online now, so I expect the market for that to increase dramatically in the next few years.

As you can see I’m really bullish on China, and everything I pick for stocks I pick with the long term (1-5 years) in mind. Foreign stocks make up about half of my portfolio right now.

And to touch on what KMC said, I also agree that the dollar will continue it’s downward decline against the Euro and the Pound. My next step is to convert my savings account over to a foreign currency. I use HSBC right now, and while they have offshore based accounts, it seems that the minimum balance to open is around $20,000, way more that I currently have.

Lazy man, maybe you or some of your readers could make some suggestions on how someone just getting started on the high net worth train can take advantage of how to capitalize on the the falling dollar.