The end of each month is the perfect time to step back, zoom out, and look beyond the noise.
Not just at U.S. stocks. At stocks everywhere.
This is a global asset class. Always has been. And many of the strongest performers over the past year are not headquartered in the United States.
That perspective mattered a lot when I was coming up in this business. Looking at markets internationally was not optional.
It was just part of the job. You learned early that capital flows don’t stop at borders, and neither do bull markets.
Then something changed.
Over the past 15 to 18 years, depending on how you measure it, the U.S. market became the dominant force investors know today. That run was real. And it lasted long enough that an entire generation of investors has never experienced anything else.
Some of them literally were not around the last time global stocks mattered this much.
But others were. They lived through the 2000s. Many even traded well before that. And they still fell into the same trap.
They assumed U.S. outperformance was the new normal.
Last year, the S&P 500 gained roughly 17%. That’s an exceptional return by any historical standard.
And yet, despite that strong performance, the United States still lagged most of the world.
That alone should make you stop and pay attention.
Because something has shifted.
What we’re seeing now is not a tired trend or a late-cycle chase for returns. It’s fresh leadership emerging across regions, sectors, and continents.
It’s participation expanding, not contracting.
In other words, this is what global bull markets actually look like.
Let’s take a look at the evidence.
New Highs Around the Globe
We could flip through hundreds of charts from all over the world, but we’d be here all night.
Instead, let’s focus on a handful of global benchmarks that matter most and carry the biggest implications for traders and investors across time horizons.
Start with Europe.
The broadest measure of European equities continues to break higher, climbing out of a multi decade base and printing new all time highs for the fourth month in a row:
Think of the STOXX Europe 600 as Europe’s version of the S&P 1500. It captures large caps, mid caps, and small caps in a single index.
This is not a narrow rally. It’s broad participation across the entire European equity market.
Now here’s something I haven’t been able to say very often over the past 20 years: Emerging markets are at new all time highs.
Read that again.
The latest monthly close for the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) was the highest on record.
This is not a stretched move that looks tired or overextended. This is new information. New leadership. New stocks joining the trend.
That is global breadth expansion, not deterioration.
Dig a little deeper within emerging markets and the picture gets even more interesting.
Africa just closed at its highest level in more than a decade. Latin America finished the month at its highest close since 2018.
These regions carry heavier exposure to Natural Resources, and the relative strength there reflects that reality:
You can’t talk about emerging markets without talking about China.
The Shanghai Composite Index just closed at its highest level in over a decade. And this strength is not isolated:
Participation is expanding across the broader emerging markets universe, not concentrating in one or two places.
Look across Southeast Asia and you’ll find new highs in Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, South Korea, and others.
On the developed side of Asia, Japan continues to print new all time highs month after month in the Nikkei 225.
And then there’s Singapore, breaking out of a massive base that took almost 18 years to build:
Moves like that don’t happen in isolation. They happen when capital is flowing globally and risk appetite is expanding across regions.
Finally, let’s add a sentiment layer to this discussion.
Israel just recorded another new all-time high. That makes 10 consecutive months of record closing highs for the Tel Aviv 125 Index, and 18 of the last 19.
Since October 2023, Israel’s stock market has more than doubled, all while sentiment along the way could not have been more negative:
That’s a powerful reminder of a simple truth.
Price is what pays.
Too often, investors build narratives first and look at price second. When price contradicts the story, they keep the story and ignore the evidence.
That’s backward.
Prices across developed and emerging markets are hitting new all-time highs. You can go continent by continent and see it for yourself.
Almost no one actually does.
And that is where the real edge begins.
Nobody Looks Until It’s Too Late
Almost no one actually does this work.
They don’t go country by country. They don’t check in every month.
They don’t care what is happening outside their home market until it’s already obvious.
By the time they finally look up, the trade is mature, the stories are everywhere, and the easy money has already been made.
That’s usually right around the time capital starts rotating back toward the United States.
That behavior is not a coincidence. It’s human nature.
So when you start seeing broad interest in global equities, when everyone suddenly “discovers” international stocks at the same time, that’s your signal.
Not to chase. To start getting more selective. To recognize that the global trade is getting crowded.
And it’s not just U.S. investors who are late.
Foreign investors have never allocated more of their financial assets to U.S. equities than they have today.
According to Ned Davis Research, that figure just hit a record 32.4%, more than double the level from 2008 and higher than the previous peak set back in the 1960s.
Everybody is leaning the same way.
Everybody is wrong.
The unwind has already started. The United States has underperformed most of the world despite posting a strong year.
That’s not a contradiction. That’s the point.
Leadership has shifted.
And until the crowd finally notices and overreacts, we expect it to stay that way.
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs