High-quality foreign stocks are a great way to diversify your portfolio. Moreover, many fast-growing markets, like China and India, have positive outlooks. That’s because their people are generally younger than North Americans, and rising incomes are helping more of them advance into the middle class.

Even so, world stock market investing remains riskier than investing in North America. That’s because many emerging countries have language barriers, weak investor-protection laws, less commitment to openness, fairness and so on.

Here are 3 simple ways to tap into world stock market profits at lower risk:

1. Blue-chip U.S. companies: A simple way to gain international exposure at lower risk is to invest in U.S. stocks. We advise keeping around 25% of your portfolio in U.S. stocks. That’s because many blue-chip U.S. stocks have operations in many countries. This will let them benefit from a rebounding global economy, as well as a return to prosperity in the U.S.

With the Canadian dollar now hovering near parity with the U.S. dollar, there’s never been a better time to add high-quality, multinational U.S. stocks to your portfolio. If you’re a conservative investor, you could choose from the companies we recommend in our Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter’s Conservative Growth Portfolio.

2. New York American Depositary Receipts (ADRs): An American Depositary Receipt is an investment unit for foreign companies that trade on a U.S. stock market. These units can represent fractions of shares, whole shares, or multiple shares in the foreign company. ADRs can help you simplify your world stock market investing by letting you buy foreign shares on U.S. exchanges without the complications of buying or selling on a foreign exchange, in a foreign currency.

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These investments also help you cut risk, because American Depositary Receipts have to follow some U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and New York Stock Exchange rules. Sony Corp. (symbol SNE on New York), and premium alcoholic-beverage maker Diageo PLC (symbol DEO on New York) are two examples of foreign firms that trade as American Depositary Receipts on the New York Stock Exchange. We update our buy/sell/hold advice on both companies in a just-published issue of Wall Street Stock Forecaster.

3. International exchange-traded funds (ETFs): Exchange-traded funds offer investors more benefits than ever before, mainly because of increased competition. That can make ETFs good choices for certain parts of your portfolio — such as the portion you devote to world stock market investing. A good example of an international exchange-traded fund is iShares S&P India Nifty 50 Index Fund (symbol INDY on Nasdaq), which we cover in our Canadian Wealth Advisor newsletter.

Exchange-traded funds mirror the performance of a stock-market index or sub-index. They hold a more-or-less fixed selection of securities that are chosen to represent the holdings that go into the calculation of the index or sub-index.

Exchange-traded funds trade on stock exchanges, just like stocks. Investors can buy them on margin or sell them short. The best exchange-traded funds offer well-diversified, tax-efficient portfolios with exceptionally low management fees. They are also very liquid.

You can get our full analysis of dozens of high-quality companies in the fast-changing U.S. market (including international firms that trade as New York ADRs) in our Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter. What’s more, you can get the latest issue absolutely free when you subscribe today. Click here to learn how.