Why investing abroad is easier than you think

Buying foreign shares directly remains a minority sport among British investors. There were around one million trades on overseas exchanges through UK stockbrokers in the last quarter of 2020, compared with around 7.5 million trades in UK securities, according to analysis from Compeer, a benchmarking firm that compiles data for the wealth-management industry. However, this is substantially higher than it was just a couple of years ago, when international trades would never come close to half a million even in a strong quarter.

Even allowing for the fact that many people traded far more than normal in the turmoil of 2020, it’s clear that investors are becoming more willing to invest in overseas stocks than they used to be. Particularly popular international shares such as Tesla now routinely appear in lists of the most actively traded shares at major UK stockbrokers – something that we almost never saw before.

MoneyWeek has always believed that investors should think internationally, so this is atrend that we’re pleased to see (even