World funds tend to be safest foreign stock investments, but only because they typically lean on better-known U.S. stocks. Just examine portfolio carefully to make sure they don’t mimic your U.S. holdings. Funds invested in small- to medium-sized companies are unlikely to duplicate foreign investment component of domestic funds.

Foreign funds, on other hand, invest mostly outside U.S. Whether they are relatively safe or risky depends on countries in which they invest.

Advice: choose a fund with best balance between countries and regions, or be very sure manager has a good record of moving in and out of regions profitably.

Country-specific funds invest in a single country or region. This type of concentration makes them particularly volatile – especially those that invest in emerging markets. If you pick right country at right time, returns can be substantial. Get it wrong and look for your head to be handed to you on a plate. These funds are for most sophisticate investors only.

Emerging-markets funds are most volatile, invested as they are in undeveloped regions subject to political upheaval, currency risk and corruption. These economies, such as Argentina’s in 2002, can collapse; governments can fall or be overthrown. On other hand, these regions have enormous growth potential. Adding a small sprinkling of emerging markets exposure to your portfolio could serve to lessen downturns in U.S. markets – but they are for long-term investors only, those who can wait for fallen markets to recover.

As always, of course, biggest risks carry greatest potential for outstanding rewards; you simply require nerves of steel. The best course is to diversify well and sleep soundly at night.

By mid-1980s, many Venture Capital Club's investment strategy had evolved to relying on a basket-investment approach to limit risk. The VCC membership would act as an informal cooperative of angel investors each of whom would put some money into approved speculations. The theory being by spreading speculative risk, angels would reduce their losses and increase their odds of success. In fact, this strategy keep Angels involved with VCC longer. However, risk reward ratio eventually ensured that Angels would be losers. By 1990s, High Tech was glamorous and logical focus for these speculative investments. The DotCom Bubble bursting meant that not only did publicly trading DotComs fail, but also almost all of VCC DotComs went under.

In March 2000, I had a mailing list of over three hundred traditional VCCs in United States. Today, my mailing list is less than one hundred. To date, there hasn't been a resurgence of traditional VCC interest in States. Given that Venture Capitalist now fund one business plan in every ten thousand they review and two-thirds of VCCs are no more, entrepreneurs seeking venture capital will find it far harder to find risk capital that they are seeking.

The alternative to traditional venture capital gambling is to follow Venture Capital Profits strategy. At least one VCC, Global Village Investment Club [http://home.earthlink.net/~beowulfinvestments/globalvillageinvestmentclubwelcome/] is doing so. If you plan to wait until Second Coming of VCCs and better odds of a favorable review by Venture Capital firms, you will probably be waiting for decades.

To contact author, email Beowulfinvestments@Earthlink.net