In terms of sheer spectacle, it’s hard to beat the World Cup.

On the pitch you have absolute legends like Messi making us wonder if time has stopped, Norse gods like Haaland roaming the earth, and superheroes like Mbappé dazzling with his otherwordly skills. There are stunning upsets like Paraguay topping powerhouse Germany, and heroic moments even in a loss like tiny Cape Verde pushing Argentina to the limit.

Beyond the beautiful game, there is also something magical about the mixed cultures of the World Cup that inspires everyone involved. There are world travelers marveling over free chips and salsa, awestruck at gas stations in Texas, and belting out American classics. And permeating it all is a grand sense of joyous national pride.

In investing, national pride is a bit of a touchy subject. Some people believe strongly in their local market and support investing close to home to support local businesses, while others see home country bias as a pernicious problem to be diversified away. In honor of the World Cup, I want to do something fun and lean into friendly competition while learning something new about how portfolio construction works in different countries.

Have you ever wondered which home country is easiest to grow your money in, and which is the most difficult?

Let’s set up a knockout tournament to find out!

Building the Brackets

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The Portfolio Charts database includes historical investing numbers since 1970 for a dozen different countries. To establish the initial seeding, here are those 12 countries ranked in order of total stock market capitalization in 2026.

1. United States
2. Japan
3. Canada
4. United Kingdom
5. France
6. Germany
7. Netherlands
8. Australia
9. Switzerland
10. Sweden
11. Spain
12. Italy

Since we have 12 countries, I’m going to give the top-4 participants a first round bye and pair the remaining 8 in a normal playoff bracket. So France vs. Italy, Germany vs. Spain, and so on. Each round will narrow down the countries using a different metric, and we will have 4 total rounds of competition to determine a world champion. Each round will focus on a stat in the Portfolio Matrix. The first three knockout rounds are Baseline 15-year CAGR, 30-year Safe Withdrawal Rate, and Ulcer Index, and we’ll pull out something special for the championship match.

Since Portfolio Charts studies all types of portfolios and not just a single boring stock/bond blend, I wanted to look deeper than simple stat comparisons and think big picture. Here’s how it works:

• For each of the 21 portfolios I track, I ranked the countries from 1 to 12 by performance for a certain metric. For example, when looking at safe withdrawal rates Australia was the 11th best in Weird Portfolio SWR and 2nd best for Three Fund Portfolio SWR. I repeated that process for every metric and portfolio.

• I then calculated the average rank of each country for a particular metric across all portfolios. Portfolio definitions follow the standard Portfolio Charts translation methodology. You can find the definition of a certain portfolio/country combination on the Portfolios pages.

• Each head-to-head matchup compares those average ranks for a given metric. Lower numbers are better and move on to the next round.

For a non-spoiler example of how it comes together, Germany had an average standard deviation rank of 6.9 across all portfolios, while Italy had an average rank of 7.4. So in a head-to-head matchup on standard deviation, Germany would earn the win.

The rich data setup looking at the average rank of each country across many portfolios is designed to help us think more deeply about country comparisons beyond overly specific portfolio + metric matchups. I also like how looking at so many portfolio options eliminates single-portfolio flukes. Only looking at the concentrated Total Stock Market may tell one predictable story, but mixing in things like the widely diversified 7Twelve Portfolio is a lot more interesting and helps us understand the broader investing experience in a country.

So without further ado, let’s get things started!

Round 1: 15-Year Baseline Return

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To compare countries in the first round, I wanted to start with a nice accumulation metric. While most people think in terms of averages, my own favorite reference point is what I call the 15-year baseline return. This looks at every rolling 15-year timeframe since 1970 and calculates the 15th percentile real compound annual growth rate. For more info on how that all works, here’s a full explanation. But the short story is that it’s a conservative long-term number that accounts for uncertainty without attempting to predict the future.

Here are the final scores.

15-Year Baseline Return

Average country rank across 21 portfolios

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Most matchups went according to expectations, but the big upset of the first round was 10th ranked Sweden trouncing the Netherlands. No matter which portfolio you chose, Sweden topped the charts in terms of baseline return nearly every time! In fact the only portfolio ruining its perfect sweep was the Larry Portfolio, where it finished #2. So if you’re a Swedish investor who has studied the numbers and found that choosing a good accumulation portfolio isn’t so hard, now you see why.

Round 2: Safe Withdrawal Rates

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Next let’s bring back our top-4 countries and move on to something a little more difficult to dominate — Safe Withdrawal Rates. These look at the 30-year SWR for every portfolio and rank the countries according to their overall retirement rankings. Because withdrawal rates depend just as much on steady performance as they do on overall returns, they often generate counter-intuitive results for investors who fixate on high averages.

30-Year Safe Withdrawal Rate

Average country rank across 21 portfolios

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This round had several tight matchups that honestly came down to luck of the draw.

Despite yet another tremendous performance, Sweden just barely fell to the famously profitable United States. Still, would you have expected retirement performance in Sweden to be on par with the US?

In an interesting Pacific matchup, Japan vs. Australia was so close that we had to go to extra time with an extra decimal. Japan just barely squeaked out the win, even with a pretty poor showing overall. This is clearly a rough metric for both countries.

Rounding it out, Canada won pretty handily against Germany and France edged the UK in a close match.

Round 3: Ulcer Index

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Now that things are getting tight, every loss hurts. So let’s switch to a measure of portfolio pain called the Ulcer Index. The Ulcer Index is a composite number that captures the relative pain of holding a portfolio by accounting for the depth, length, and frequency of every drawdown. It’s a nice equalizer because even if a country has great returns, if the pain is too much to bear then investors are unlikely to stick with the plan long enough to realize those returns.

Ulcer Index

Average country rank across 21 portfolios

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Did I mention that this is an equalizer? Japan is somewhat notorious for historical investing pain, so its loss to Canada is no surprise. The USA also has experienced a rather charmed investing experience since 1970, so its win over France is expected.

But do you know what probably wan’t expected? Take a look at that Canada rank compared to the US. It looks like we’re in for a hard-fought final.

Championship: Average Meta Rank

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When choosing a metric for the championship match, no one measure seemed to be big enough. So instead of looking at just one, I looked at all 7 metrics in the Portfolio Matrix (excluding the weighted average) and found the average rank of each country across all of them for every portfolio. That includes the baseline return, average return, safe withdrawal rate, standard deviation, max drawdown, and start date sensitivity.

Putting some numbers to it, each of 7 metrics x 21 portfolios equals 147 cells in a grid. Within every cell the 12 countries are ranked 1-12. The total meta score averages those ranks across all 147 cells. So yeah, that’s a lot of data.

That final average meta rank for each country looking at every metric/portfolio combination is about the closest I can come to an even-handed evaluation of the overall favorability of investing in general in any given country. The smaller the number, the better the experience. No matter what portfolio you choose or metric you reference, the odds are that it worked out better for you than for someone in other countries.

With that super-metric, let’s find our champion!

Average Meta Rank

Measures relative performance of all metric/portfolio combinations

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The championship portfolio match was one for the ages, with Canada just barely beating the United States in extra time with that extra decimal. For as great as a reputation that US markets have for investing, Canadians have had it slightly better over the years.

Surprised?

Relative portfolio performance is more complicated than just investing in the biggest or most popular market. Thinks like local inflation, currency conversions, and economic conditions all play a part in ways that are hard to predict if you only look at news headlines. And that’s what a good competition helps to uncover.

Complete Rankings

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While a World Cup style bracket is a fun way to compare countries, there’s no reason to stop here. To present a full picture, here are the full country rankings for that championship-style average meta rank.

Average Meta Rank For All Countries

Measures relative performance of all metric/portfolio combinations

Overall Rank	Home Country	Avg Meta Rank
1	Canada	3.21
2	United States	3.24
3	Sweden	4.33
4	France	4.96
5	Germany	5.57
6	United Kingdom	5.90
7	Italy	6.53
8	Netherlands	7.52
9	Australia	7.69
10	Japan	8.90
11	Switzerland	9.76
12	Spain	10.35

Aside from validating that our bracket indeed worked out with the two top countries in the final, a few other things stand out.

First, the performance of Swedish portfolios shouldn’t be understated. I knew going in that the Sweden stock market had come great historical numbers, but I didn’t expect it to perform so well across the board.

Next, the tight grouping of European countries in the middle makes sense with the EU leveling the playing field. Sure, France had it better overall than the Netherlands. But in general the pack was on the same page.

On the other end of the spectrum, Japan, Switzerland, and Spain rounded out the bottom of the list by a pretty good margin. Japan and Spain didn’t surprise me because Japan had such a terrible stagnation problem for years and Spain was handicapped by the fall of the Franco dictatorship in the early 1970s. But Switzerland? The famously rich country with a well-respected finance industry? Clearly investing success relative to your peers requires more than just a good reputation.

Home Is Where the Chart Is

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While some friendly country competition is always fun, my purpose for running an analysis like this isn’t really to argue for the superiority of one country over another. You live and invest where your home is, and nobody should be moving just based on portfolio performance. So the numbers are what they are and we all do the best we can.

Still, I do find this fascinating from the perspectives of entrenched financial paradigms and individual expectation setting.

Take for example the typical North American financial planner or researcher who writes or speaks about investing. That covers all the portfolio authors on the site, and also popular names like Ben Felix, Michael Kitces, Bill Bengen, and more. That’s honestly most financial names you’ve probably ever heard of, and they have an outsized influence on global understanding for how investing and portfolio construction is supposed to work.

Now look at the country rankings one more time. Here is the previous table in chart form to make it even easier to understand at a glance. Look at the US and Canada relative to everyone else.

How much of the portfolio advice written primarily by people in North America is truly universal? Or is it possible that the standard advice we all take for granted reflects a pernicious hidden bias? I have talked before about things like easy data bias where research is influenced by which limited asset data has convenient histories to study, but this goes deeper than that and illustrates what people are missing. No matter what portfolio you choose, investing in the United States and Canada seems easy. But there’s more to it beneath the surface.

The spread in average performance outcomes across countries reveals an important point that is easy to miss if you only look at US data or listen to your favorite voice on this side of the two major oceans. Every country is different and faces their own unique challenges. Even for the exact same portfolio, important additional factors like the strength of your local currency and the stability of local inflation can make the difference between an ideal choice and a major disappointment.

Also, much of the apparent superiority of the US and Canada may have less to do with the countries themselves and more to do with who is creating the portfolio ideas. If you only look at US data and create portfolio concepts designed for clients in North America, the inherent bias in portfolio construction towards performance in North America is by design. Create a different competition of portfolios designed by and for Europeans, and the stats would probably look very different. So yeah, selection bias in the financial world has a major effect on how we understand investing.

But don’t be discouraged! I see this common limitation as an opportunity.

If you give portfolio advice for a living, even if foreign investors are not your client base I think it would be a great service for the industry as a whole if you take a moment from time to time to note your assumptions and the proper limits of your conclusions. Lots of people listen to you even if they don’t pay you to manage their money, and interpreting your core ideas for different countries can go a long way towards establishing trust and helping more people than you know.

And if you’re an investor across the pond scouring the internet for investing education, pause for a moment to think about what it means to be learning from voices who started their investing journey hanging out near the goal with no offsides rule. Lots of good financial advice is truly universal, such as the measurable benefits of low costs and broad diversification. But some others that you might take for granted — like how investing in all stocks is the best idea for all young people or that bonds are always low risk — may be less applicable to you than you realize. It’s critical to learn how to extract the helpful thought processes from any embedded bias.

It’s for that reason that I have spent so much time and effort over the years collecting portfolio ideas and asset data from so many sources and translating them all to the perspectives of investors around the world. I’m sure I have my own natural biases, too (we all do), but I’m at least self-aware to the point of doing something about it. My hope is that by presenting the core concepts and offering interactive Charts to build your own customized analysis, at some point the data can speak for itself.

By the way, my interest in foreign investing also goes way beyond theory. If you’re not familiar or haven’t checked it out in a while, visit the Assets section. It contains a list of real-world ETFs available in your home country, and I have recently upgraded the interface quite a bit to make it more relevant and useful for European investors. So when you settle on a portfolio, it’s not just an academic exercise. I can help point you to actual funds as well.

I realize I’m pretty unique for this perspective, as most people who talk about portfolio theory are professional advisers with a very specific target client base in mind and no time to waste catering to investors outside of their profitable reach. I guess that’s a perk of writing about investing as a hobby, and it’s rewarding in its own way to have an uncrowded field to explore. If you value what I do and find global investing research as interesting as I do, please consider becoming a member to support the cause and earn a few special perks. But no matter what, I’m here to help.

Capture the Cup

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If you want to explore this idea of multi-country analysis for yourself, the best place to start is to visit one of the many Charts and experiment with changing the home country. Another good option is to try the same with the data on a Portfolios page. And no, it’s not just about personalizing things to your own little slice of the world. It’s bigger than that.

Study the charts when you change the country and let the results sink in. How does the variability of the numbers for a given portfolio based only on the home country affect how you perceive the portfolio concept? And what can you take away from that impression to build something that you would feel good about even in a very different situation?

Those are tricky questions to answer. They take a lot of data, self-reflection, and an open mind. But once you converge on a robust solution, you’ll be surprised how much confidence it will give you.

We may have started with a World Cup tournament, but in the end the true trophy is not for your country but for you. Competing beyond borders opens our eyes to a bigger world, but the goal is quite personal.

How confident are you in your chosen portfolio?

Put it to the test and see what happens. The challenge will only make you stronger, and the reward will last a lifetime.

Game on!

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