I'd be curious to see results for other countries, the graph of "Chance of Losing in the Stock Market" in particular. In the case of Japan, it appears that if you'd still have significant losses if you invested 25-30 years ago: https://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5En225+Interactive#{"ra...

If you're in Japan you can still invest in the US stock market... and should to diversify. I invest in international markets even though I am in the U.S.

Just to point out to people who may not be aware, this leaves you open to currency risk. The FTSE 100 dropped 3% in GBP terms last week, but maybe 10% in USD terms.

This cuts both ways of course: you can make money on favourable currency moves. But it's an important risk to be aware of before buying assets in a foreign currency.

You want this though. For example if you was English and invested all in uk investments you would have dropped massively USD terms.

If you spread your investments in many different currencies in pound terms you would have actually gained from this crisis.

Diversification also applies to currency

Eventually most people have to redeem their investments, though, and they're going to do so in their home currency.

A US investor who bought foreign assets in 2014 and sold them today would have been hurt by the 25% USD/EUR rally in 2014-2015. The dollar rose against almost all other currencies too (besides, for example the yen).

I moved my all of my UK pension to non-UK bonds (mainly US) one day before the referendum result. It was a mission and a half using my pension fund's online system, truly awful UX, I almost gave up.

I don't normally change the holdings or attempt active investing, but it just seemed like a very asymmetric bet - nearly 50/50 polls, very large potential downside if not diversifying outside the UK/sterling.

On the other hand you often already have exposure to the fate of your own country, because you live and work there.

this is the biggest fallacy in the investing thesis. buy and hold didn't work in russia, or argetina, or many others. because we live in a country that's prospered (for a plethora of reasons), we assume the prosperity must continue unabated forever.

I think they're referring to the fact that the Russian stock market collapsed completely (i.e. total loss) in the beginning of the 20th century.

Clearly. But they were considering investment strategies (buy&hold vs alternatives). My point was that few if any investment policies would hedge you against market extinction events.

I would probably have preferred to own real-estate in Russia... Although If we look back to before ww2, probably not...

If a fund manager is relatively close to Kremlin, than yes.