Initially Revealed In Moneycontrol
In September 2024, I flew to Dubai to guage the wealth administration alternative there for our agency. What I discovered was arduous 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 one who moved to Dubai, and plenty of very sensible folks did, absolutely accounted for. The secure haven picture that made Dubai so enticing is being stress-tested in methods which can be making a few of these assured selections look bewildered. Individuals who concentrated vital wealth in Dubai actual property are actually considering of how to diversify as the actual property costs are falling.
I take into consideration Indian buyers 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 document 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 fully inside Indian markets has, by selection or by default, excluded over 96 % of the world’s public fairness investable property.
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 so forth., don’t exist in Indian indices. They’re merely not there to personal.
After which there may be the demographic argument, which I’ve huge respect for however discover more and more inadequate by itself. AI-driven automation could alter the connection between workforce measurement and financial output in methods now we have not but absolutely understood. A demographic dividend in a labour-intensive economic 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 development 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 based mostly on financial conveniences makes it troublesome to think about the winners and losers of tomorrow.
Due to this fact, simply being hopeful isn’t a method.
The info from the final two years is price sitting with. The S&P 500 returned 25 % in 2024 and 18 % in 2025. Gold, which most Indian buyers are underweight in digital kind, rose 27 % in 2024 after which over 67 % in 2025, its strongest annual efficiency since 1979. Singapore’s Straits Instances 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 greatest annual acquire since 2009, underpinned by structural demand from AI infrastructure buildout and the vitality 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 document 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 development premium, the concept quicker financial development produces higher fairness returns, merely has not proven up constantly within the numbers.
There may be additionally the rupee, which not often options in how folks calculate their returns however completely ought to. The INR fell roughly 3 % towards the greenback in 2024 and one other 5 % in 2025, touching Rs 90.95 in December – a document low. As of mid-March 2026, it sits close to Rs 94, with oil costs including contemporary strain. The rupee has been on a constant long-term weakening pattern, which isn’t a current anomaly. Gold’s 67 % USD acquire 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, completely different sector compositions, completely different political rhythms. When one geography is beneath strain, one other usually isn’t. A structured, globally diversified portfolio isn’t constructed on the hope that all the pieces goes up collectively. It’s constructed on the understanding that all the pieces is not going to go down collectively both.
The world now we have seen in the previous few a long time isn’t 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, usually, is a portfolio of world ETFs.
ETFs provide a degree of transparency that issues when investing outdoors acquainted markets. Holdings are disclosed every day and priced in actual time; you recognize precisely what you personal, at what value, at any second.
There may be additionally the query of entry to themes that merely don’t exist in India. A semiconductor ETF offers publicity to the businesses manufacturing the chips that energy AI, NVIDIA’s provide chain, Taiwan’s foundries, and the whole ecosystem of a expertise cycle that India’s listed markets can’t replicate. Clear vitality, superior healthcare, uncommon earth supplies, China’s expertise restoration – every of those is accessible in a single commerce, with out the single-stock threat of attempting to select winners in unfamiliar markets.
Indian buyers can entry international ETFs by means of direct overseas brokerage accounts by way of the RBI’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme at as much as USD 250,000 per 12 months, or by means of GIFT Metropolis’s IFSC framework for INR-accessible USD publicity.
One tax level price 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, completed correctly, isn’t a commerce however a long-horizon allocation.
The case for India’s long-term development is actual, and no one 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 development, the place geopolitical shifts arrive with out warning, and the place probably the most vital return alternatives of the final two years had been concentrated in property and markets many Indian buyers by no means touched – why would you restrict your self to at least one geography?
Focus isn’t conviction more often than not. It’s the absence of a method.
Disclaimer: Truemind Funding Adviser Pvt. Ltd. is a SEBI-Registered Funding Adviser (Reg. No. INA100017089, dated 9 March 2022). Registration with SEBI or NISM certification doesn’t assure efficiency or guarantee returns.
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 isn’t indicative of future returns.
