Why the best bets may be abroad.

As the stock market makes one new high after another, investors rightly ask themselves what opportunity remains and where are the best bets.

The best bets are often not what is popular today, but what is being overlooked.  That’s where we are looking.  Here are a few areas of interest.

Europe is just now coming out of a multi-year downturn.  Their companies and stock markets are cheap.  China offers the possibility of more sustainable growth with the economic changes just now being announced.  Japan is undergoing an economic restart experiment referred to as Abanomics (inflating their currency through direct injections), which may indeed work and help them grow again.  Brazil has been through a significant correction with many companies selling at very attractive prices.

Next year we believe that some of these areas will perform better than the U.S. stock market.

Therefore, we will be moving appropriate allocations to these areas.  We are not giving up on the U.S. stock market; we just believe opportunities are expanding.  Sustaining growth and performance are the “name of the game.”