Less ASX, more global: How Aussie investor portfolios are changing... slowly

It's been an eventful few years for investors and markets, but how has that been reflected in Australian investors' portfolios? 

At Livewire Live 2026, Bell Financial Group CEO Arnie Selvarajah shared the the key insights from its stable of more than 330,000 portfolios across self-directed clients, financial planners, brokers and their clients. What's interesting is what has changed, and what hasn't, since 2023. 

The world has changed, portfolios haven't really

One of the first takeaways from Bell Financial Group's data is that, ultimately, investors across the board remain allocated in much the same they were three years ago.

As Selvarajah says:

"What's interesting is that nothing's changed over the last three years in an environment where the world has changed quite considerably. As a nation, we think about investing in a very static way."

There has been some movements, but broad sector allocations have barely shifted since 2023. 

The few moves of note are that self-directed investors have actually increased their allocations to the Financials sector, while financial planners and brokers have increasingly favoured Materials and dropped Healthcare. 

"What's interesting to me is that the self-directed segment is actually more diversified than our two advised segments, which you would naturally feel that if we were being advised, those portfolios would be constructed in a more diversified way," said Selvarajah.

ETFs are on the rise

One well-publicised evolution of the investing landscape has been the rise of ETFs, with more than $350 billion now allocated to the Australian ETF market. 

Unsurprisingly, this growth has also been reflected in Bell Financial Group's client portfolios, with ETF allocations up across the broker, self-directed and financial planner segments, with the latter seeing the largest aggregate growth. 

"In the financial planning client segment, that is the benefit of being advised and that the ETFs are being used to diversify portfolios," said Selvarajah.

As ETFs become an increasingly significant part of portfolios, he is keen to encourage clients to actually look under the hood of what makes up their ETFs, especially if they're intended to add diversification.

"The message I'm trying to get through here is to start to think about what's in your portfolios, look through some of the products that you might be holding in those portfolios to really understand whether your portfolio is diversified or not."

Au revoir ASX

Arguably the most interesting insight from Bell Financial Group's data is how investors are slowly moving away from the Australian market in favour of global exposure. 

"The good news is we've moved away from our home bias," said Selvarajah. "Australia's traditionally been very strong in investing in Australian-exposed products, but you can see here now that between 55 and 66% of ETFs used in Australia are actually exposed to a global market."

"We're actually thinking more broadly around a global exposure to our portfolios. But the same problem exists in the US, with the top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 representing about 40% of the value of that index."

So while Australian portfolios are changing slowly, Selvarajah's advice to investors remains the same:

"Think through your portfolios, look through what you're actually exposed to."