NEW YORK (Money) -- Question: With North Korea testing nuclear weapons and all the other troubling things in the world, I'm thinking of switching around my current 401(k) contributions - move the money that currently goes to international funds into domestic bonds instead. Do you think this is a good idea? -Latrice, Princeton, N.J.

Answer: Let's see, how should I put this? Mais Non! Nein! Nee! Nyet!

Or maybe just a simple No!

I can't imagine why anyone would want to begin messing around with his or her retirement portfolio just because there's turmoil in various spots around the world.

I mean, it's not as if the international scene is ever a love fest. There's almost always some sort of crisis brewing somewhere around the globe. Take just the last few years. We've had to deal with war in Afghanistan and Irag, terrorist bombings in Madrid and London, escalating tensions with Iran - and those are just the biggies.

Despite all these headline-grabbing problems, however, the international funds that you want to flee have done quite well. In fact, average returns for broadly diversified foreign stock funds have been upwards of 20 percent for the past three years.

That's not bad, and certainly better than what U.S. stock and bond funds have returned over the same period.

Does that mean that things couldn't shift over the next three years? Of course not. Sometimes U.S. funds outperform foreign stock funds over a given stretch of time, and sometimes it's the reverse. But I don't think it's very predictable.

And I don't think that excellent or lousy performance in either international or domestic funds correlates to political troubles around the world. Oh sure, there may be times when there's a "flight to quality" when investors move money into U.S. Treasury bonds or gold in the wake of some truly earth-shattering event.

But that's usually a temporary phenomenon, not something to base your long-term retirement investing strategy on. Ultimately, I think switching your money from one investment to another on the basis of political upheaval makes about as much sense as trading on the basis of short-term market and economic developments, and has about the same chance of long-term success - i.e., none on both counts.

I've got a better idea. Why don't you first build a 401(k) portfolio that includes domestic stock and bond funds and some international stock funds as well? As a guide to what percentage of each you might include in your portfolio, I suggest you check outA Plan For Every Stage, a story that gives suggested stock and bond allocations for people at three main stages of retirement planning.

Alternatively, you could look to the allocations in target-date retirement funds as a guide since the aim of these funds is to provide a well-diversified portfolio at a variety of different stages of life.

The target-date funds at Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and Vanguard can serve as a good starting point for helping you develop your own mix.

And finally, remember: the point of including international funds in your portfolio isn't because you think they'll necessarily provide the highest return over a particular period of time. Rather, it's to assure that your portfolio's performance isn't solely dependent on the U.S. financial markets.

Investing in foreign funds has another benefit as well. Since the U.S. and foreign financial markets don't always move in synch, adding some foreign exposure to an all-U.S. portfolio can dampen the up-and-down swings in your portfolio over the long-term. In other words, by moving out of international funds, you may very well be making your portfolio more instead of less risky.

So by all means stay informed about what's going on in the world. But don't be so quick to adjust your portfolio because of what you see and hear. Professional money managers aren't particularly good at beating the market averages using traditional investment analysis. I see no reason why you or anyone else has a better shot using global upheaval as your guide.

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