Is It Possible to Lower the Risk of International Investing in Just One Trade?

While many U.S. investors find familiarity and comfort investing in their home market, the fact remains that the U.S. equity market represents only about half of the world’s equity opportunity set¹. Thus far in 2015, international markets have generally outperformed the U.S., showcasing the potential benefit of being internationally diversified. When U.S. investors buy equities abroad, either directly or through a fund, they may not realize it but there are two potential sources of return—and risk—in that investment decision: the equities themselves and the currencies of the markets in which those equities are listed. Both of these factors can significantly impact the investment experience.   Addressing the Currency Risk For more than five years, WisdomTree has shown investors how to neutralize one of these sources of risk through its introduction of currency-hedged equities to the exchange-traded fund (ETF) structure. This approach helps investors to hedge one source of uncertainty—exchange rate fluctuations relative to the U.S. dollar—and to focus more purely on investing in the stocks themselves. It’s an approach that we think fits well with investors who believe that over longer time horizons currency returns tend to sum to zero. Put another way, if there is little to no expected return, but an additional source of volatility, why layer currency exposure on top of international equity exposure?   Global ex-U.S. Equities Had Lower Volatility Than the S&P 500 Index When Currency Was Removed² Perhaps the best way to illustrate this point is to show how stocks outside the U.S. have performed over the last three decades with—and without—currency exposure. When looking at the risk and the returns of MSCI AC World ex-US Index back to 1987, two key takeaways become evident: Foreign currency exposure added to the volatility of the index, and foreign currency exposure served as a negative source of return compared to how the stocks performed with no currency impact.   Isolating a Source of Uncompensated Risk   For definitions of indexes and terms in the above chart, visit our glossary.       One Bottom Line Of This Volatility Analysis: Investors have been employing a home country bias in allocations, often because currency risk added to the volatility profile of international equities. Focusing on local market returns through currency-hedged offerings can help target the local market return more directly, reducing the risk profile of international equities and allowing investors to achieve more proper international diversification without making as big a bet on the U.S. markets.   Introducing the WisdomTree Global ex-U.S. Hedged Dividend Index To provide exposure to this broad asset class—developed world and emerging market stocks outside the U.S.—WisdomTree designed the Global ex-U.S. Hedged Dividend Index. The Index represents exposure to 40 distinct markets and is designed to hedge exposure to 29 currencies. The cost to hedge, dominated by the annualized difference in one-month interest rates between the U.S. and each targeted market, is 0.63%³.   Company Weightings: The Index also makes use of WisdomTree’s Dividend Stream® weighting methodology. Simply put, the 1,000 largest companies by free-float adjusted market capitalization are selected from a universe of global ex-U.S. dividend payers and then weighted by the cash dividends paid over the prior annual cycle.   Country Exposures: Country exposures are adjusted at each annual rebalance, such that they match the free float-adjusted market capitalization-weighted exposures defined by the 1,000 select companies.   Using the WisdomTree Global ex-U.S. Hedged Dividend Fund as a Pure Play on Global ex-U.S. Equities   The WisdomTree Global ex-U.S. Hedged Dividend Fund (DXUS) is designed to track the performance of the WisdomTree Global ex-U.S. Hedged Dividend Index before fees and expenses. DXUS represents WisdomTree’s broadest option in the category. For more information on the exposures of this Fund, please click here.         ¹Source: Bloomberg. Refers to how the MSCI AC World Index, a broadly recognized global benchmark, had approximately half of its weight in stocks outside the United States as of 5/22/15. ²Global ex-U.S. equities refers to the MSCI AC World ex-US Index universe. ³Source: Bloomberg, with data measured as of 3/31/15.