Global sectors provide portfolio diversification

Diversifying an investment portfolio across countries no longer offers the same protection it once did, claims Pauline McPherson, investment director at Standard Life Investments. At the Investment Week Forum in Edinburgh, McPher- son explained this is because companies are operating on more of a global basis than ever before, while the returns provided by national stock markets are increasingly correlated with their international peers. As such, global sectors have grown in importance and can increasingly be used as the building blocks of portfolio diversification, she suggested. ...