Buy the world: Decoding Devina Mehra's winning global portfolio

Themes always change, nothing lasts. No country, asset class, sector, or investing style works forever Devina Mehra Founder, chairperson & MD, First Global Group

- Sashind Ningthoukhongjam

They say, 'Home is where the heart is'. But, when it comes to money, Devina Mehra, the founder and chairperson of securities firm First Global, feels strongly that part of it should be parked outside the home country. "Wherever possible, we like to buy individual stocks and securities globally. In certain markets, because of regulatory reasons, stocks cannot be purchased directly, in which case we may get exposure via country ETFs (exchange-traded funds)," said Mehra, who runs a global fund out of the Cayman Islands.

She invests 80% of her portfolio in her global fund and the rest in India PMS fund. "We bought South African REITs, Chinese shoemakers and Australian mining firm." In an interview with Mint she shares her investing strategy, global stocks, China, dollar index and more. Edited excerpts:

How should new investors select countries to invest in?

We prefer looking at individual stocks. Most of our portfolio is bottom-up stock picks. That said, we do make country bets by looking at how countries have performed over time.

This is not investment advice, but I'll give you one example. We track 42 countries' indices. This includes the major developed and emerging markets. What we've noticed is that the indices which are at the bottom, 39th to 42nd rank tend to become top performers in the coming years. For instance, Nasdaq was among the bottom-ranked in 2022, but became a top performer the next year.

Even geographies that have real issues, like Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, that have performed poorly, often see a complete reversal. If a country is going through issues, it does not necessarily mean it will stay like that forever—at least as far as the stock markets go. For all you know, if the crash is too sharp, the rebound is equally dramatic. That said, generally, in our portfolios, we took only small positions in such extremely beaten-down markets as we want to be a little conservative with our investors' money.