Stocks in developed markets outside the United States have underperformed those in the United States almost without interruption for the last decade. While the long-lasting U.S. stock market dominance has us understandably cautious, we are warming up to international equities. We highlight four main reasons why international equities’ performance could be poised to improve.

Economic Backdrop

Economic growth in developed international economies continued to slow at the end of 2019 and remained tepid into 2020. Efforts to boost growth through fiscal policy and structural reforms saw little success. The benefits of aggres

U.S. stocks broke a two‐week losing streak with their best weekly gain in eight months. Good U.S. economic data, well‐received fourth‐quarter earnings results, news of a possible Coronavirus vaccine, and China tariff reductions helped lift sentiment and propel the S&P 500 to recover its losses from the previous two weeks. 

All four U.S. indexes we track gained between&n

U.S. hiring came in stronger than expected in January, rebounding from a disappointing December print.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 225,000 in January, far surpassing Bloomberg’s consensus estimates for a 165,000 gain, according to the jobs report released today by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This number may help alleviate some investor unease over December’s somewhat weak reading. We argued at the time that December’s reading likely was due in large part to calendar effects and the volatility of month-to-month changes. We prefer to base our views of the labor market’s vitality on the larger trend, wh

Stocks got off to a nice start in 2020, until the late January selloff due to the coronavirus outbreak fears. In the end, the S&P 500 Index fell only 0.2% for the month, but it did mark the end to a 4-month win streak. Should bulls worry about what a down January might mean for the rest of 2020?

There’s an old adage on Wall Street that suggests, “As goes January, so goes the year.” This was first discussed in 1972 by Yale Hirsh of the Stock Trader’s Almanac, and it has an impressive track record.  Simply put, when the first month of the year was green, it bodes well for the rest of the year (and v