How to buy foreign shares

If you stick to your domestic stock market, you may be missing out on great deals abroad, says Tim Bennett. Here, he explains why you should buy foreign shares, and how to go about it.

When it comes to investing, most of us like to stick to what we know doubly so when the economic climate is this uncertain. And on the surface, there are lots of good reasons for British investors to stick with the UK market rather than venture somewhere more exotic.

Firstly, British companies are familiar to us. Most of us know what Tesco does. We also assume we know a bit about its prospects, even if our knowledge is confined to what we glean from our weekly shop. Far fewer of us could claim to know much about China Resources Enterprise, the Hong Kong-listed Chinese retail conglomerate, even though it is in a similar business sector.

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.