Neptune's Wintle: The US has confounded assumptions again

The US market has confounded some observers this year. After such strong performance in 2013, when the market rose just shy of 30%, many commentators had written the market off or at least condemned it to underperformance in 2014.

In fact the US has continued to perform well this year. Up to 31 July and in sterling terms, the S&P 500 has risen 3.65% to outperform the MSCI World’s 2.85% return. This is also ahead of the 1.28% from the FTSE All-Share, -0.87% from the MSCI Europe ex-UK, and the 0.42% from the Topix. This performance is likely to continue. This does not mean that there are not things to worry about, and in conversations with clients and investors many issues have been raised as factors to be concerned about, which certainly bear scrutiny. Some are worried that the market has gone up ‘too far’ and t...