Most Australian investors with a standard super account, an ASX portfolio and a global ETF typically hold less diversification than they realise. Super is already heavily international, the ASX stocks earn significant revenue offshore and global ETFs are, essentially, a large bet on US technology. Understanding where those exposures overlap is the starting point of global portfolio management.

You already have global exposure whether you asked for it or not.

Superannuation is often overlooked when reviewing a portfolio. As of 2024 end, 48% of Australian superannuation assets were held internationally, with international listed shares accounting for close to a third of total super fund portfolios. That means that an ordinary investor with a $500,000 balance in a standard growth option has around $200,000 in global equities before they make any conscious decision to go offshore.

An ASX listing says nothing about where the company’s revenue comes from. CSL generated 94% of its FY2025 revenue offshore, with the United States alone at 47% of its US$15.6 billion in total revenue (CSL Limited, 2025). BHP’s iron ore business, which set a production record of 290 million tonnes in FY2025, sells almost entirely to Asian steel mills, China the dominant buyer (BHP Group, 2025). So, an investor who holds both and then adds an emerging markets ETF to get Chinese exposure stacks a third layer of the same trade.

The right question is what your total exposure looks like across your whole portfolio, rather than what to add next.

Are your ‘global’ investments really global?

Most Australian investors who have moved offshore have done so through broad ETFs that are benchmarked to the MSCI World Index. As of December 2024, the US makes up 73.94% of that index, with information technology alone being 26.17% (MSCI, 2024). An investor who bought a global ETF to reduce concentration in Australian stocks may have traded one concentration for another.

An unhedged position in an index that is 74% US equities is implicitly a bet on the AUD/USD exchange rate. In 2025, the Aussie dollar fell approximately 12% against the USD. Hedged global ETFs on the ASX outperformed their unhedged equivalents by between 10 and 33 percentage points across every category in 2025 (ReviewETF, 2026). Over the past decade, the cumulative difference between hedged and unhedged returns on US assets reached 62 percentage points in total (Professional Planner, 2025).

Australia’s pro cyclical nature is one argument for staying unhedged. When global equity markets sell off, the AUD tends to fall with them, and the currency gain for unhedged investors offsets part of the equity loss. During the global financial crisis, the AUD/USD fell around 31% and unhedged investors in global equities absorbed far less of the USD dominated loss than the index returns alone suggested (Macquarie Asset Management, 2024). The AUD currently sits at around 13% below its long term average of US $0.75 (Professional Planner, 2025). At those levels, a mean reversion in the AUD would work directly against unhedged positions. The hedge decision deserves its own periodic review, independent of the original purchase decision.

Source: RBA, 2026 

What’s next?

For most investors at this point, they are looking at three overlapping concentrations in US large cap technology. The currency position has typically been set at purchase and left unmanaged.

Rebalancing the regional allocation is usually the first consideration. Developed markets in Europe and Japan, or small and mid cap indices with lower exposure to large technology names, reduce correlation to existing ETF holdings without adding further weight to the same positions.

That addresses where the money is invested, but nothing about how the index weighs its holdings. Market cap weighted indices systematically overweigh the securities that have most recently outperformed, which over the past decade has concentrated them in US technology. Allocations to value, quality or low volatility strategies draw from a different part of the return distribution and have historically maintained lower correlation to each other across full market cycles.

Currency sits outside these return factor considerations entirely, which is why it warrants a separate assessment. Most investors set a hedging decision at the time of purchase and have not revisited it since. It is important to consider the AUD/USD separately from any review of the underlying holding.

For investors who meet the access and liquidity requirements, private markets constitute a fourth area. Infrastructure, private credit, and private equity do not mark to market daily, which means their return profile is not driven by the same factors that move listed equities.

These changes do not need to occur simultaneously. The prerequisite for any of them is an accurate picture of the portfolio’s aggregate exposure.

Conclusion

Most investors who have built a global diversified portfolio have done so in pieces. They have a super account that they rarely look at, ASX stocks whose revenues run largely offshore, and a global ETF that is a large bet on US technology without an actively managed currency position. All together, those pieces often point in more similar directions than expected. Getting that picture right is where global portfolio management for Australian investors starts.

Disclaimer

Vitti Capital Pty Ltd (ABN 13 670 030 145) is a Corporate Authorised Representative (001306367) of Point Capital Group Pty Ltd (ABN 41 625 931 900), the holder of Australian Financial Services Licence number 518031. This communication contains general information only and does not take into account your objectives, financial situation, or needs. 

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