Should You Invest Overseas? If you do not have time and expertise to invest overseas directly, you can take the mutual fund route. In 2021-22, the outward remittance under Liberalised Remittance Scheme for 'investment in equity and debt' by Indian citizens went up to $746.57 million from $195.45 million in 2014-15.

In 2021-22, the outward remittance under Liberalised Remittance Scheme for 'investment in
equity and debt' by Indian citizens went up to $746.57 million from $195.45 million in 2014-15. Similarly investment in property went up to $112.9 million from $ 45.54 million during the same period. "Diversification, both geographically and from a currency perspective does make sense from an asset allocation stand point," says Lakshmi Iyer, CEO, Kotak Investment Advisors.

Agrees Pritam Patnaik, Head - Commodities, HNI & NRI Acquisitions, Axis Securities '"Global investment helps to divide your risks between multiple markets (India and the US). Additionally, it provides exposure to various companies and industries currently missing in India,
such as Artificial intelligence, CRISPR, etc."

But when it comes to investing abroad, the US markets march ahead. They are popular mainly on account of two things: One they have a large market size. In March 2022, the Indian stock market had a market cap of $3.21 trillion, while the market cap of the US stood at a whopping
$47.32 trillion. Second is the liquidity: The US markets are much more liquid than the
Indian markets. This means that it is easier to buy and sell stocks in the US market as there is always someone willing to trade.

Further, any depreciation of home currency also adds returns to the portfolio. So far this year, the Indian rupee has depreciated more than 7% against the US dollar. It clearly means additional returns to the investor, apart from any gains made by the movement of the US stocks. If the stocks underperform, gains through currency fluctuation can also smooth out returns. "One gains from dollar's strength. In 2011, the average USD-INR exchange rate was around INR 47. In 2022, the exchange rate was around Rs. 82, indicating an investor would have massively simply through currency gains. This growth is in addition to the gains seen by US stock markets," says Gaurav Sharma, Vice President, Research and Content, INDmoney.

Direct investing in stocks: Many Indian brokers enable foreign investing for their customers. Angel Broking, 5paisa and Axis Direct, for instance, have partnered with Vested Finance to provide services to their clients. ICICI Securities has tied up with Interactive Brokers LLC, a US-based online brokerage firm to offer its customers the ability to invest in the US markets. Once your account is open, you need to fund it with foreign currency. Then there are finance apps like INDmoney. With it, investors can open a zero-cost, zero-brokerage US stock account and start investing. "The most important hurdle of transferring your Indian rupees to US dollars - this used to take so many days and had costs such as currency conversion costs, fund transfer charges, etc, - now with INDmoney, there is zero cost of fund transfer (only GST is there) and now one can transfer funds to US stocks account instantly," adds Sharma

"Today, a global investing account can be opened instantly in just about five minutes. We have partnered with Vested Finance, a new-age global investment platform to offer US-based stocks and ETFs. Access to global markets can be availed, but we have chosen to be a part of the largest capital market in the world, hosting some of the largest organizations globally, which in turn facilitates good transparency, information, and research on the open source. You can transfer funds using Axis Bank. The bank converts INR to USD and remits it to your US brokerage account. The entire process takes around 1-2 business days," says Patnaik.

You can also open an overseas trading account directly with a foreign broker with a presence in India. Some such brokerages are Charles Schwab, Ameritrade, Interactive Brokers, etc. Ensure that you understand the fees and charges before opening the account. So, conduct your research properly before you pick the best broker to invest in US stocks from India.

Another way is through NSE's newly announced service-NSE IFSC. Through this you can access 8 US stocksAlphabet (Google), Amazon, Meta Platforms (Facebook), Netflix, Apple, Walmart, Tesla, and Microsoft. However, stocks can be purchased in fractions using DRs.

Investing via mutual funds: If you do not have time and expertise to invest in stocks directly, you can take the mutual fund route. Investing in international mutual funds is the same as investing in any other equity mutual fund. The money is invested in rupees, and in return, units of the funds are allocated to investors. There are two ways in which the fund manager invests your money in foreign stocks. By directly purchasing stocks and building your portfolio. Or, by investing abroad indirectly either as feeder funds or fund of funds. Again, these funds are classified on the basis of region or country specific exposure or thematic exposure.

There are several mutual fund houses in India that offer international mutual funds to Indian investors. These include names like ICICI Prudential, Edelweiss, Nippon India, Mirae, and PGIM. However, the fresh flows into these funds got a hit when, in February, Sebi asked mutual fund houses to suspend investments in stocks listed overseas as the overall limit of $7 billion was getting breached. Only feeder funds or the fund of funds (FoFs) investing in the exchange traded funds (ETFs) abroad were open for investments as they had not breached their investment limit. Latter has a separate industry level cap of $1 billion.

Following Sebi directive that mutual fund schemes may resume subscriptions and make investments in overseas funds/securities up to the headroom available, mutual funds like ICICI, Edelweiss, PGIM and Nippon have opened their international schemes for both lump-sum and SIP investments. "All our international funds are open for subscription at the moment. Selective investors who want to take benefit from attractive valuations in some international markets have been investing since subscriptions were re-opened," says Niranjan Avasthi, Head - Product, Marketing and Digital Business, Edelweiss AMC.

Is it right time to invest abroad? "Inflation in the US is showing indications of peaking out. Slowdown is quite evident though globally, including the US. Markets have corrected, however uncertainty led volatility could continue for some more time. Hence, investors could look at investments in a graded manner rather than investing all at one go," says Iyer. But what about other markets? "On a relative basis some markets like China are trading at very cheap valuations and investors who are waiting to invest in international markets have a good opportunity to do so at the moment," adds Avasthi.

How much to invest: An investor may begin with a marginal exposure to international assets and gradually add on to it over time to mitigate single country risk. "Investors should also agree to the terms that these funds may underperform in the short run but shall help their portfolio in the long run in diversifying risks," says Avasthi