Investing in Industrial Cameras with Basler AG

Perhaps the most important concept that retail investors should grasp before managing their own portfolios is that of risk. One simple way to describe risk is the “volatility of returns”, in other words, the extent to which a stock will climb or fall based on the overall market movements (we measure this using something called “beta“). Risk can be reduced by placing multiple bets as opposed to putting all your eggs in one basket. That should be intuitive. What may not be so intuitive however is something we call “home bias“.

“Home bias” refers to the propensity for investors to “buy what they know”. Most U.S. retail investors will invest in U.S. stocks denominated in U.S. currency which means that they are betting on the continued strength of the U.S. as a country along with the U.S. dollar as a currency. As the world becomes increasingly global, it makes sense for retail investors to start looking at all the global markets as their investment universe as opposed to only the popular U.S. stock exchanges.

There are many interesting stocks to be found in the European markets that receive little exposure in the United States. One such company we covered about 3 months back was Isra Vision (ETR:ISR), a company that operates in a similar space to Cognex (NASDAQ:CGNX) which we