Jim wrote: <<Personally I am a big fan of rolling your own index rather than buying a fund. Get a broker that lets you buy stocks individually, and spend a weekend doing your own equal weight index.>>

As it turns out, that's what I'm doing now, or at least trying to. I'm a US citizen, residing (for all of my 76 years but perhaps not in the next 76) in the US. I've opened a Schwab Global account, which permits me to exchange dollars for common currencies and purchase many non-US stocks directly. I'm researching those stocks now (using a variety of tools but relying largely on M* reports on ADRs and summary stats via Yahoo! financial). For various reasons, I'm focusing on shares of European companies that do not rely heavily on sales to the US and/or have good moats, should tariff wars come to pass. I'm also trying (somewhat) to diversify across sectors.

Thus far, my list includes (in no particular order, and with awareness of the French bias):

ASML
SAP
Schneider Electric
Dassault Systemes
BNP Paribas
AXA
Orange
ENGIE
Carrefour
Hermes

I'm all eyes if anyone has comments/critiques, either to stocks on this list or ones that are not but probably should be. Thanks.