Originally Published In Moneycontrol
In September 2024, I flew to Dubai to evaluate the wealth management opportunity there for our firm. What I found was hard to argue with. Affluent families are relocating in serious numbers. A city where East meets West, where global capital feels genuinely at home. We opened our office there shortly after.
I am writing this in early 2026, with the Middle East in a state that nobody who moved to Dubai, and many very smart people did, fully accounted for. The safe haven image that made Dubai so attractive is being stress-tested in ways that are making some of those confident decisions look bewildered. People who concentrated significant wealth in Dubai real estate are now thinking of ways to diversify as the real estate prices are falling.
I think about Indian investors in exactly the same breath.
India’s equity story is real. I am not here to argue otherwise. SIP inflows at record highs, mutual fund AUM past Rs 80 lakh crore (as of February 2026), a rapidly growing retail investor base – these are not small things. India is expected to grow at 6-7 percent over the coming years. But here is what I keep coming back to: India represents approximately 3.6 percent of global equity market capitalisation. The US alone is over 60 percent. An investor who stays entirely within Indian markets has, by choice or by default, excluded over 96 percent of the world’s public equity investable assets.
That is not caution. That is a structural blind spot.
Of the top 500 companies globally by revenue, nine are from India. The businesses reshaping global wealth right now, in AI infrastructure, advanced semiconductors, hyperscale cloud, etc., do not exist in Indian indices. They are simply not there to own.
And then there is the demographic argument, which I have enormous respect for but find increasingly insufficient on its own. AI-driven automation may alter the relationship between workforce size and economic output in ways we have not yet fully understood. A demographic dividend in a labour-intensive economy is one thing. What it becomes in an AI-augmented one is a genuinely open question. I am not making a bearish call on India. I am saying that no single growth thesis, not India’s, not Dubai’s, not anyone’s, is foolproof in a highly uncertain macroeconomic situation where global dynamics are reshaping and realigning. The rapid change in power equations, leverage, and friendships based on economic conveniences makes it difficult to imagine the winners and losers of tomorrow.
Therefore, just being hopeful is not a strategy.
The data from the last two years is worth sitting with. The S&P 500 returned 25 percent in 2024 and 18 percent in 2025. Gold, which most Indian investors are underweight in digital form, rose 27 percent in 2024 and then over 67 percent in 2025, its strongest annual performance since 1979. Singapore’s Straits Times Index delivered a total return of 29 percent in 2025. Copper hit an all-time high of over $13,000 per tonne by year-end 2025, its biggest annual gain since 2009, underpinned by structural demand from AI infrastructure buildout and the energy transition.
India’s Nifty 50, over the same two years, delivered a CAGR of approximately 9.6 percent – closing 2024 at 8.8 percent and 2025 at 10.5 percent.
Respectable. And nowhere close.
The longer record is even 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 growth premium, the idea that faster economic growth produces better equity returns, simply has not shown up consistently in the numbers.
There is also the rupee, which rarely features in how people calculate their returns but absolutely should. The INR fell approximately 3 percent against the dollar in 2024 and another 5 percent in 2025, touching Rs 90.95 in December – a record low. As of mid-March 2026, it sits near Rs 94, with oil prices adding fresh pressure. The rupee has been on a consistent long-term weakening trend, which is not a recent anomaly. Gold’s 67 percent USD gain in 2025 translated into something higher still for the Indian investor who owned it.
Global markets usually do not move in sync. That is the point. Different monetary cycles, different sector compositions, different political rhythms. When one geography is under pressure, another often is not. A structured, globally diversified portfolio is not built on the hope that everything goes up together. It is built on the understanding that everything will not go down together either.
The world we have seen in the last few decades is not going to be the world we will see in the next few.
The question that follows naturally is: how does an Indian investor actually access any of this – gold, semiconductors, value stocks, dividend-paying equities across geographies – without picking individual stocks in markets they do not understand?
The answer, in most cases, is a portfolio of global ETFs.
ETFs offer a level of transparency that matters when investing outside familiar markets. Holdings are disclosed daily and priced in real time; you know exactly what you own, at what price, at any moment.
There is also the question of access to themes that simply do not exist in India. A semiconductor ETF gives exposure to the companies manufacturing the chips that power AI, NVIDIA’s supply chain, Taiwan’s foundries, and the entire ecosystem of a technology cycle that India’s listed markets cannot replicate. Clean energy, advanced healthcare, rare earth materials, China’s technology recovery – each of these is accessible in a single trade, without the single-stock risk of trying to pick winners in unfamiliar markets.
Indian investors can access global ETFs through direct foreign brokerage accounts via the RBI’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme at up to USD 250,000 per year, or through GIFT City’s IFSC framework for INR-accessible USD exposure.
One tax point worth noting: Foreign ETFs require a 24-month holding period to qualify for long-term capital gains treatment, versus 12 months for domestic equity investments. Global investing, done properly, is not a trade but a long-horizon allocation.
The case for India’s long-term growth is real, and nobody should dismiss it. The case for international diversification is much simpler: in a world where AI is redrawing the rules of economic growth, where geopolitical shifts arrive without warning, and where the most significant return opportunities of the last two years were concentrated in assets and markets many Indian investors never touched – why would you limit yourself to one geography?
Concentration is not conviction most of the time. It is the absence of a strategy.
Disclaimer: Truemind Investment Adviser Pvt. Ltd. is a SEBI-Registered Investment Adviser (Reg. No. INA100017089, dated 9 March 2022). Registration with SEBI or NISM certification does not guarantee performance or assure returns.
Content shared is for educational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice. All investments are subject to market risks. Past performance is not indicative of future returns.
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