This weekend saw confirmation of the basic thesis for our investment strategy, which is that Global Investing makes sense. After all, we are www.global-investing.com.

After Wall Street hit a speed bump, almost all foreign markets continued, from a lower base, to rise further in April to date. The only exceptions, and there are rather few of them, are company-, sector-, currency-, or country-specific.

You can see the details if you are a paid subscriber at www.global-investing.com. There are two subscriber tables, one for funds, and the other for individual stocks and bonds. The first is for new subscribers seeking rapid diversification across market with less money than the old-timers have (thanks to our performance). If you haven't subscribed yet, you can see our closed positions. In both cases, to read the spreadsheets, use the "printer friendly" button even if you don't want to print.

More international stock news follows:

The main reason our portfolio gained is that almost all currencies rose against the US$ last week. That is the flip side of Fed chief Janet Yellen reassuring the market that US interest rate rises will not necessarily start a year from now.

Now for the stocks which failed to gain...

The vapors hit Zurich Insurance (ZURVY) after the family of the CFO who committed suicide last summer made accusations at the annual meeting of the Swiss firm. Readers will recall that we averaged up (which newsletters tend not to do) to benefit from the first round of this scandale. It ultimately took down the former chairman of the Swiss insurer. That was a big result in the closed world of Swiss finance, but the widow wants more. This too shall pass. ZURVY is worth buying more of since however unhappy the ex-CFO's widow may be, it no longer vulnerable.

Worry about Internets took down Naspers, Tencent, and Liberty (both varieties, A and K). This is sector related. Worry about hotshot biotech overpricing afflicated Mallinckrodt and the contagion hit its former parent, Covidien. There may be further impact in Israel; Tel Aviv is closed on Fridays. Fear of pharma also affected Reckitt-Benckiser which is suffering also because it is focused (like many drug companies, although it is more a household goods firm) on emerging markets. NPSNY, TCTZF, and LBTYA can be bought on further weakness. COV, MNK, and RBGLY are buys now.

New weaking in potash prices and the Canpotex cartel hit Agrium, which still does some business in that sector, although we picked it to be present in more general plant nutrition. AGU is a recovery play and issued a profits warning so we would hold off loading up on its products or stock for now.

Renewed China worries took down our makers of children's clothes to be bought by the four indulgent grandparents focused on one little kid or teenager. I think the sell-off in Naibu and Camkids, both UK-listed, is overdone. Being a grandma myself, I know how easy it is to buy for the kiddies. (If you are looking for a short-sale, consider Build-a-Bear (BBW), which was tipped last week at a value-share conference. I tried to buy my eldest grandchild one of their custom-made bruins at Hanley's, a London toy emporium, when he was 4, 9 years ago. He was absolutely terrified by the noisy machine stuffing the bear and refused to take it. I fobbed it off on his baby sister, as bears are sex-less. Of course I never again took any of the other grandchildren to get a custom-made bear. Now with the youngest at 6, the lot of them are virtually beyond cuddly toys except for him. And being the youngest in his family he is trying very hard to be sophisticated. So my one bad experience with one small boy has led to serious loss of future revenues for Build-a-Bear. Moreover, of course I warn other grannies about what happened.)

Finally there is a move afoot to exit Russia because Putin snatched the Crimea from Ukraine advised in an article in today's Telegraph, a UK newspaper of the right sometimes called the "Torygraph", by James Bartholemew.

He calls for selling all holdings in Eastern Europe, starting with Raven Rus which he bailed out of in a panic at 75 pence (it closed higher Friday.) Mr. Bartholomew, back in full Cold War mode, argues that "it is even possible that the property could be expropriated as part of tit-for-tax sanctions." Really? Actually he is dumping GB:RUS punitively, wanting to hurt Russian. This is not investment thinking but geo-political excess.

As for the rest of Eastern Europe we saw gains last week in our positions ranging from Coca Cola Hellenic (which may lose its market share in Yalta because of sanctions, but should do well elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc) to iShares MSCI Poland Invetable ETF (EPOL) to Yandex.

The Bartholomew exit strategy would have affected EPOL. But I want to be in Poland:

*Poland gains brownie points when Russian turns nasty, thanks to its history of defending western values during the (real) Cold War;

*it is the largest country and customer of the European Union countries east of the Oder-Neisse;

*it is actively and seriously involved in NATO

*Poland is run by relatively appealing democratically-oriented honest politicians compared to other ex-Comecon countries;

*it can spend any grants it receives without paying the money over to Russia as (alas) would happen to Ukraine because of huge infrastructure needs;

*any reforms required to grant money would be good for business in Poland which would gain from lower protection of jobs and less generous pensions;

*Poland has a powerful US lobby (and pretty good ones in Britain, Germany,  and France as well.)

YNDX is up despite being an Internet company with mostly Russian users.