So most investors, probably me included, should stick to index funds. We all know this. So the usual advice here is to buy the S&P and be done with it. Now the question becomes sort of how to interpret this advice if you're not American, I am swedish so the examples will use the OMX but basically I can see 2 ways of reasoning about this
1. The advice is basically just to buy the broad market index fund you "live inside of", for Americans that the S&P, for me it would be OMXSPI. Simple enough, however, if we look at the two indexes side by side we see that for the past 10 years (roughly how long I've been invested) I would've lost money doing this. As in, the S&P has outperformed the OMXSPI. There's another, more theoretical, side to this in that if the Swedish market is doing well then Sweden generally should be doing well and as such I might view that as having exposure to the Swedish market regardless, but this might be next leveling myself.
2. The advice is to buy the S&P so I should buy that if it's cheaply available to me. As I stated above, this would've served me in the past and so why not. Fair enough, but this gives me currency market exposure (as eventually I would need to convert the gains to SEK). Now, I do not understand how forex trading works at all or how to value a currency which is why I am hesitant to line.
So, to those in similar positions, how do you reason about this? Do you just ignore currency risk and go with the S&P? Do you account for it somehow?
I should add that any Americans that invest in foreign markets are basically in this same position so advice from you might be helpful as well.