Seeing more and more people shifting to invest in foreign stocks, I decided to research what methods are available. It turns out there are three main ways that the general public can access.

The first is to buy a foreign equity mutual fund. For beginners who don’t want complicated processes, this is the easiest method because you just choose a fund based on your preferred policy, such as U.S. stocks, Chinese stocks, or global stocks, and let the fund manager take care of it. The advantages are easy access, low initial investment, and lower risk compared to buying individual stocks. The downside is that there are quite a few fees, making it unsuitable for short-term trading.

The second method is to trade foreign stocks using CFDs. This is more flexible, allowing trading in both rising and falling markets. You can use leverage, requiring very little capital, and it offers high liquidity. However, the risks are also higher accordingly.

The third method is to buy individual stocks directly by opening an account with a brokerage that offers foreign stock services. It’s similar to buying Thai stocks, earning returns from price differences and dividends. The advantage is that you can choose stocks you’re interested in, but the required capital varies, and not all stocks are available for purchase, depending on the brokerage.

So, which stocks should you watch this year? Currently, AI remains a major trend. NVIDIA still leads in GPU chips with no competitors. Microsoft is integrating AI into all its products, and Azure continues to grow. Eli Lilly’s weight-loss drugs are experiencing rapid growth. ASML is the only manufacturer of chip-making machinery. Visa benefits from the shift toward digital payments.

Investing in foreign stocks isn’t as difficult as you might think. Just choose the method that suits you, do your research, and get started.