Where to?

Its a pretty sickly looking equity market at the moment. It doesn't seem to matter where you look, the bad news just keeps on coming.

The BRIC (Brazil, Russia, China and India) seem to chug along but this isn't really helping the ordinary South African investors who are just trying to work out how to PROTECT some of their money.

A couple of people have asked me what I was planning to do next from an investment perspective and I stuck to the theme about diversification for my portfolio building.

Next on my shopping list is my first exposure to the Deutsche Bank X-Tracker ETF's.

Basically the ETF's are there to try and give me a bit of protected brain dead 'basket' exposure to the major markets. Would have loved exposure to the BRIC economies via ETF's but no such luck so I guess I have to go with what I've got.

It is nice to also have some offshore exposure and enjoy the quarterly distributions that these ETF's provide (Even if the yield is relatively low).

My buying order for these instruments is likely to be
DBXJP (Japan)
DBXUS (US)
DBXWD (World)
DBXUK (UK)

I think the systematic adding of these to the portfolio will provide some nice spread to the portfolio and at least let me look at some offshore assets without dipping into my offshore allowance.

Something a little different
I don't have any plans to buy any (no funds available) but Sterling Waterford will be issuing the second of their Carbon Credit Notes. These worked quite well the last time providing investors with a return of 150%+. Second time around in a tougher economy I think will be slightly trickier, but still believe they are something different while still providing a nice investment.

I guess thats just something to stick in the back of your head...