Mr. Scharar: FCA Corp is a registered investment advisor. Our roots go back to 1975, when I founded the firm. We are involved in fee-based financial planning as well as investment asset management. As a part of that, we advise four mutual funds, the Commonwealth International Trust Series. We have a Japan Fund, a Global Fund, an Australia/New Zealand Fund, and a Global Real Estate Fund.
What I'd like to focus about today is what we see happening in the global marketplace and some ideas for investors as to how they may pursue that. For the US investors today, the reality is that you need to think in the context of not only your return on your investment in the US dollar-based sense, locally, but also from a global sense. With currency being fairly volatile at this stage, and the economies of the world in various degrees of maturity and stability, it really makes sense for a US investor to look not only within the US but beyond the US for investing, and that's done sometimes through buying US companies that have a large international trade or exposure. Buying companies that are foreign based that tend to be more involved in the foreign marketplaces also does that.
One of the things that we think is really important today is diversity. Every investor really needs to think very carefully about diversifying not only between classes of investments like fixed income and equities, but also between the geographic nature of the investment portfolio. We also think it's important today for an investor to understand what they are trying to do, are they investing or are they merely gambling with their money. There are many opportunities to make money today, and some of those come under the umbrella of being investing because you can trade them on exchanges; commodities are a good example of that, when purchased by a non-user of the commodity, or it can be other types of investment strategies like selling short, etcetera.
While all of those can produce a profit, they are different from the fundamental concept of a long-term investor who holds a position in their portfolio based on an assumption there will be future growth in performance and therefore the value of that asset will go up over time, and what we are really going to focus on is investors and not so much speculators or gamblers in the process. The starting point for that, we really believe, is to think about your investment strategy. We think the people really need to go back to school and go back to the basics, and we call them the three ÔR's.
You really should consider buying real companies that produce real products and real financials. These tenets will help avoid fads and will also help you find long-term investment opportunities. It means that the investor has to have a basic knowledge of the business units in which they are investing. I think that's real important because so often people invest in things that they have no idea what it really does, and I think that can get you in a lot of trouble if you are not careful. It doesn't mean you have to be an expert in every business, but it does mean that you really should go back to those concepts, real companies, real products, and real financials.
I think as a part of that, we'd like to talk a little bit about what we see happening on the international side, and there are a couple of markets that we might like to comment on. I'm going to ask Wes to join me and I think Wes, with this stage, would you give a little bit of an overview of what we see happening in the Australia/New Zealand marketplace, and then I'll address what we see happening, for example, in Africa and some opportunities for investors in those markets. I will stop and let Wes Yuhnke make a few comments.
Tickers included in this excerpt: IOC, KEP, MOW.NZE, SLLDY, SPN.NZE, SRHGY
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