European equities – not a market to ignore
European equities – not a market to ignore
Caroline Cantor, Mark Nichols and Mark Heslop discuss European equities’ performance, valuation and diversification properties – and share a few surprising facts.
Investors may be surprised to learn that European equities have been the best-performing major equity market over one, two and three years in constant currency.
The chart below shows this outperformance over three years, as well as the close correlation of the MSCI World Index to the US market (S&P 500). Having seen significant outflows in 2022, the start of 2023 has seen some inflows to Europe. We think there are several reasons why investors should consider increasing their allocation to European equities.
The chart below shows this outperformance over three years, as well as the close correlation of the MSCI World Index to the US market (S&P 500). Having seen significant outflows in 2022, the start of 2023 has seen some inflows to Europe. We think there are several reasons why investors should consider increasing their allocation to European equities.
Europe outperforms
Source: Bloomberg, as at 4 May 2023 (total return in USD)
Europe offers diversification
The top five MSCI World stocks are US tech names – presumably, investors own these for growth, yet the some of the top names in our European strategy have generated better revenue growth over the last year as seen in the chart below. Despite this, these five European companies trade at a discount to this set of US peers (12-month forward P/E average of 25 times for the Europeans vs 32 times for the US companies).
US tech vs Europe