The U.S. stock market is big and has performed pretty well over the long term, but it is not the only market in town. There are plenty of stock markets all across the world which have also been making money for their investors. They may each be unique, but they all offer great opportunities.
The Dow Jones can be considered to be a very good indicator of how the U.S. market is performing. If the Dow goes up the U.S. market in general had a good day, if it went down then the U.S. market in general went down. It is the same in other countries; they each have their own indexes that allow us to see how they are performing.
The U.S. market may be volatile, but the Chinese market might be trending higher and higher. Or it might be the other way around. Regardless it is always good to know.
Why is that? If you know the countries that are performing well then you know were stocks are performing the best. Now do you want to keep fishing around in the same fishing hole or move to where the fish are biting? Of course you want to go were the fish are biting.
Wouldn’t it be a nice idea to move from bulls market to bulls market no matter where they may be? Well if you are looking at other countries then it will be easier to do that because there are more opportunities out there. This is the general idea and it can work out pretty well.
Now to a certain extend most countries will follow each other. What happens in the U.S. market will affect the European markets and so on. But it does not always work on a 1 to 1 bases. One market will still perform better and another market may not even be affected at all.
In our modern world most brokers will allow you to buy stocks in other countries without you running into problems so if you have such a tool at your disposal, why not take advantage of it? Paying attention to other markets can only help.
For more on investing in other countries visit this How to Buy Foreign Stocks page and make sure to get this list of Foreign Stock Exchanges. Free reprint available from: Looking at Foreign Stock Exchanges.