[zo1]

Why is no one considering investing offshore? Is it really that risky?

I've seen some ridiculous returns on offshore funds. Have a look at some of the Southern African funds (though it does include non-SouthAfrican funds as well):

http://www.morningstar.co.za/

[pjc50]

Is that USD-denominated returns or ZAR-denominated? Offshore investment exposes you to FX risk as well as that of the underlying investment.

[zo1]

A few of them are USD-denominated (so it's difficult for me to invest in it). Others are ZAR.

So it's the foreign-exchange rate that adds risk/volatility, I see.

[vladko]

purely from a technical standpoint for wealthbot.io the challenge is acceptance of these securities by custodians.

for example our platform doesn't really care which security it works with whether it's a stock, and EFT or bitcoin it doesn't matter.

the problem is finding the financial custodian that will execute your trades using the said currency. we did have real interest in someone supplementing their portfolio with bitcoins... but we can't find a clearing house/custodian that would execute relevant trades for us.

if there is an international custodian that we can hook into to work with securities from other countries, it's a no brainer.

that's why open source wins. we are not restricted by any regulation or market conditions. if the technology exists and we can hook into it, it's possible.