We have been advocating Freedom Investing since 2004. Every year, The Heritage Foundation evaluates all the world’s countries using their Index of Economic Freedom, where a high score correlates to nearly every positive measure of a country. We then use this ranking and efficient frontier analysis to craft our Foreign Stock investment strategy that we call “Freedom Investing.”

This article is part of my series where I review how Freedom Investing performs for the quarter. In this analysis, I have used the actual products we are investing in rebalanced monthly to our static asset allocation targets with returns ending April 30, 2022. This analysis does not reflect our dynamic tilt or our individual stock foreign health care strategy, both of which we implement in client portfolios.

For benchmarks, I have used actual products as comparison. The EAFE (EFA) should be compared to Developed Freedom Investing, Emerging Market (VWO) should be compared to Emerging Market Freedom Investing, and the All World ex-US (ACWX) should be compared to the Overall Freedom Investing.

Last quarter, we saw that in 1-year returns ending September 30, 2022, Developed Freedom Investing had a -0.44% disadvantage, Emerging Market Freedom Investing had a -0.34% disadvantage, and Overall Freedom Investing had a +0.14% advantage.

In March 2023, our Investment Committee updated our Freedom Investing strategy for the new 2023 Index of Economic Freedom. For the purposes of this model, those changes are assumed to have been implemented during the March 1, 2023 rebalancing. You can read about those changes in “2023 Index of Economic Freedom Update.”

This quarter, we saw that in 1-year returns ending April 30, 2023, Developed Freedom Investing had a -3.78% disadvantage, Emerging Market Freedom Investing had a +0.84% advantage, and Overall Freedom Investing had a -1.59% disadvantage.

	Ticker	3-Month	6-Month	9-Month	1-Year
iShares MSCI EAFE ETF (Market Return)	EFA	2.89%	24.62%	12.46%	10.11%
Developed Freedom Investing		1.19%	20.73%	9.56%	6.33%
Australia	FLAU	-7.37%	12.58%	3.18%	-1.25%
Austria	EWO	-0.19%	25.90%	16.27%	8.38%
Canada	FLCA	-2.01%	7.44%	1.38%	-3.06%
Denmark	EDEN	10.96%	33.95%	17.85%	16.46%
Finland	EFNL	-0.51%	16.77%	7.14%	5.35%
Ireland	EIRL	8.15%	34.98%	31.29%	23.07%
Netherlands	EWN	0.28%	30.02%	11.91%	12.26%
New Zealand	ENZL	-4.23%	15.02%	4.29%	1.58%
Norway	ENOR	-4.36%	2.57%	-10.96%	-12.63%
Singapore	EWS	-2.17%	16.47%	7.33%	4.42%
Sweden	EWD	6.47%	27.03%	10.03%	7.23%
Switzerland	FLSW	5.95%	21.59%	10.12%	5.75%
United Kingdom	FLGB	4.45%	23.97%	12.57%	10.09%
	Ticker	3-Month	6-Month	9-Month	1-Year
Emerging Markets Freedom Investing		-3.98%	17.46%	1.44%	-2.98%
Emerging Markets	VWO	-4.64%	15.45%	0.38%	-3.82%
Taiwan	FLTW	-1.21%	25.47%	2.24%	-6.24%
South Korea	FLKR	-4.40%	18.41%	0.44%	-8.93%
Chile	ECH	-2.90%	18.12%	10.22%	19.38%
	Ticker	3-Month	6-Month	9-Month	1-Year
Overall Freedom Investing		-0.77%	19.53%	6.58%	2.92%
iShares MSCI ACWI ex US ETF (Market Return)	ACWX	0.24%	20.92%	7.67%	4.51%

For more information about Freedom Investing, you may enjoy reading “A 25-Year Review of Freedom Investing” or “Risk-Return Analysis of Freedom Investing.”

Photo of Ireland by Marco ten Donkelaar on Unsplash. Image has been cropped. Returns data gathered from Morningstar Advisor Workstation.

October 3, 2023: Corrected a mistake where the returns where the return data ended March 31, 2023 and a mistake where the allocation to South Korea was incorrectly left out of the “Emerging Market Freedom Investing” and “Overall Freedom Investing” returns.