3) The average maturity of bonds
held by foreign investors in US Treasuries is falling.
Domestic emerging market bonds - those issued within an emerging market country - make up about 3/4 of the amount of debt in the emerging market bond markets but because it can be difficult for a variety of reasons to trade in domestic emerging bonds, emerging market bonds
held by foreign investors are usually foreign or external emerging market bonds.
There is an added U.S. tax wrinkle here: the Internal Revenue Service levies a 15 % withholding tax on dividends on U.S. stocks
held by foreign investors (these are deducted automatically).
Generally, US property
held by a foreign investor will be subject to additional requirements as stipulated by the Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act.
Not exact matches
The financial sector changes were later confirmed
by Yi Gang, the newly appointed head of China's central bank, who said
foreign investors would be allowed to
hold up to a 51 per cent equity stake in brokerage firms, futures companies and fund management firms.
When the Putin regime forced Royal Dutch Shell Plc and other
foreign investors to cede control of a massive gas export project on Sakhalin Island in 2007, Exxon's
holdings in the same region remained intact and untouched
by the government.
It
holds $ 1.17 trillion or 20 % of the $ 6 trillion in federal debt
held by foreign sovereign
investors.
Assets likely to be
held by private
investors include: cash in bank deposits, securities (such as shares issued
by private companies, and government or corporate bonds), property, insurance policies,
foreign currencies, cars, art and antiques.
Nearly 8 billion kronur ($ 1.13 billion as of June 28, 2012) is
held within Iceland
by foreign investors, unable to leave the country, and is flowing (along with domestic capital) straight into Iceland's property markets.
In a bid to improve the market's accessibility for
foreign investors, the Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission («CVM») is
holding a public hearing for Brazilian issuers with the purpose of improving the regulations set through the recently implemented Instruction 561 and more specifically, those related to proxy disclosure, regulated
by Instruction 481.
From Japan Today comes an interesting column
by Yvan Allaire and Francois Dauphin: Now
foreign investors,
holding over 30 % of their shares, are unrelenting in their pressure for Japanese companies to adopt American - style governance.
Of the 13.6 per cent of farmland owned
by foreign investors in Australia, just over half (27.5 million hectares) is
held by UK - based individuals and investment funds.
Debt
held by the public, such as Treasury securities
held by investors outside the federal government, including that
held by individuals, corporations, the Federal Reserve System and
foreign, state and local governments.
For
investors who use XAW, the drag caused
by foreign withholding taxes is somewhat smaller, because not all of its stocks are
held via U.S. - listed ETFs.
In my last blog post, I showed Couch Potato
investors how they could reduce the
foreign withholding tax drag in their RRSP accounts
by holding US - listed ETFs.
However, you can also diversify
by adding
foreign ETFs in reasonable quantities, as much as 10 % of your
holdings as a conservative
investor.
«As you can see, my
holdings are dominated
by foreign stocks, portfolios that can and do have the ability to tactically move to cash (and have a high exposure to real assets), and stocks that are shareholder - friendly and returning lots of cash to
investors.
As of February 2012, $ 5.1 trillion, or approximately one half of the debt
held by the public, was owned
by foreign investors, the largest of which are China and Japan who both own over $ 1 trillion in treasury securities.
In the absence of many Canadian ETFs offering direct currency exposure
by holding foreign stocks how would you best advise a smaller Canadian
investor to avoid the currency conversion difficulties.
The good news is that
by adding
foreign stocks,
investors have been able to offset the pressure of rising interest rates on their other
holdings.
It makes its first appearance at number 28, with Greece, which although not assessed to have the highest risk of corruption in the region (that position is
held by Bulgaria), presents significant challenges for
foreign investors.
In 2002, for example, insurance companies sold $ 7.5 billion of property and reduced their total
holdings to $ 32.4 billion, a level substantially lower than the $ 47.1 billion of real estate owned
by foreign investors (please see chart).