Does success breed wealth or wealth breed success?

A German soccer fan, perhaps poking fun at our stereotyping of his nation, recently put a beach towel on a seat at Wembley to reserve his place for the Champions League final. Not sure who he is supporting as both teams come from Germany being Bayern and Dortmund. These two teams rather spoilt things for the pundits who were expecting an “el classico” of a final from the two giants of Spanish football, Real Madrid and Barcelona, who both lost in the semi finals.

It is not just on the football field the Germans are performing well in sports, Michael Jung recently failed by a whisker at the final jump to add the Badminton Horse Trails championship to his gold medal and world champion title. Sebastian Vettel has done a pretty good job of dominating Formula One in the last few years taking over from Michael Schumacher.

As these are all professional sportsmen, the fact they come from the economic powerhouse of Europe may be coincidence, but I rather doubt it. It is more likely that Germany has invested in its enthusiasm for sports.

From your finances should you invest as enthusiastically in Germany? With all the problems of the Euro most people have been very negative on investing in Europe, but like most things in life there can be good and bad in most areas.

Despite slowing slightly this year the German economy is in far better shape than many others in Europe including Spain, so this does beg the question can you buy success?

An interesting comparison can be made each year between the top performing fund in the worst performing geographical area to that or the worst performing fund in the best performing geographical area.

Of course consideration also has to be given to the level of risk taken by a fund to achieve its performance. If the top performing fund one year is the worst performing next year it is likely to be because of the excessive risk taken the previous year.

As mentioned previously in these articles diversification between investment sectors is important so that consistent performance is achieved and the big dipper investment ride is avoided. The example of those who have just invested in gold this year is a prime example of this. If your investment strategy is to shoot the lights out you may just shoot yourself in the foot in the dark that follows.

We still have a snooker world champion in Ronnie O’Sullivan although I do not think many Germans play snooker!

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