I am a U.S. citizen living in Germany. This is nice for many reasons, but causes some real headaches for investment. Long story short, normal U.S. brokers won't let me buy ETFs etc. without a US address, and if I buy the same in Germany I will be double-taxed into oblivion. The U.S. taxes citizens regardless of where they live, and disincentives for "passive foreign income" screw expats over.
However, buying individual stocks and bonds is not "passive" and therefore avoids the double taxation problem. I understand this as a loser's game and would vastly prefer the buy-and-forget index fund approach, but that's not an option for me. So my questions:
* Is it possible to "simulate" an index fund by simply buying a large quantity of individual stocks and bonds? Or would this take a life-consuming amount of effort to do without massive risk?
* Am I better off just parking my money in bonds or bond-like accounts (Raisin etc.)?
* Are there other reasonable investment approaches that anyone in a similar situation has taken?
**TLDR** I'm hoping to approximate as closely as I can the "normal" investing approach that a working person in the USA would take, but I have to do so without "passive" index funds.