Does US offer a once in a lifetime opportunity?

US

Grant Bowers, portfolio manager of the Franklin US Opportunities fund, explains why now is the time to invest in the largest and most diverse economy in the world.

Considering US equity markets have outperformed many global markets in the past year, the question is: can this outperformance continue? A good way to answer this is to look at past performance of the US stock market. Historically, negative returns on a trailing basis for the S&P 500 index, which we use as a representation for the US stock market, have only occurred three times in the past 70 years: the depression in the 1930s; the oil embargo in the 1970s and the housing bubble and global financial crisis of 2008 to 2010. The question for us is this: have we been presented with an o...