It’s certainly not the “Dow” as Allan Sloan so excellently covered in his recent piece. (You can also find the perfect summary by The Week here.) It’s not even the S&P 500—which is just the 500 largest companies in the U.S. Add in nearly all US, International, and Emerging Market stocks, bringing your total in the neighborhood of 12,000 companies, and then you’ll have a feel for what we call global capitalism. That’s also what we at Hill consider to be the true market. The image above shows the percent that each country represents in world market capitalization as of December 31, 2014. Note where some markets might be much smaller that expected. Even the U.S. only represents 52% of the total, whereas most investors we meet come with portfolios that have little other exposure outside of that.

Readers of our newsletter know the name Carl Richards. Carl is known for connecting money and emotion via his column and sketches on the NY Times web site. He has nearly 200 sketches featured on the site here. Carl recently invited Rick Hill to do a podcast with him and we’re excited to share this 4 minute clip of the conversation with you. Click the image to listen.

Just four weeks ago, Jason Zweig of The Wall Street Journal warned investors to lower their long-term expectations of stock returns going forward. He gave one bit of advice for improving your odds of success—diversify internationally. If you’re a client of Hill Investment Group you can put a check mark next to this guidance. Unlike most investors, you’ve had significant international exposure since becoming a client. Here’s an excerpt:

After more than six years of a bull market, investors should stare a cold, hard truth straight in the face: Future returns on stocks are likely to be far slimmer than the fat gains of the past few years.

Leading investment analysts think you will be lucky to squeeze out an average return of 2% annually, after inflation and fees, from a typical portfolio of stocks and bonds over the coming decade or so.

Investment expenses will loom much larger in a world of smaller expected returns. So will avoiding big mistakes.