7IM's Ben Kumar: Geographic location almost irrelevant in investing

'Vocation, not location'

The investment world is too obsessed with geography: ‘UK stocks’, ‘US equities’, ‘Chinese markets’ and so on.

In the 1600s, it made sense. The public companies listed in Amsterdam and London raised capital from local investors to fund projects in the country. Banks and insurers. Utilities. Railroads. Factories for new industries. Breweries. The exception was the trading companies (British and Dutch East India, most famously), but even profits made by those companies were quite literally shipped back home and pumped into the domestic economies. Dentons' Nik Colbridge: What IPO candidates really care about when choosing a listing venue You can still see it today in countries in the very earl...