The US Shines

Below we highlight the year to date performance of the major stock market indices for more than 80 countries around the world.  The G-7 countries have black borders while the BRIC countries are shaded in light blue.

After trading mostly higher for the first four months of the year, global markets hit the skids in late April and early May on sovereign debt concerns.  China and parts of Europe have gotten hit the hardest, while some emerging markets have done really well in 2010.  As shown, Ukraine is up the most year to date with a gain of 52.92%.  Estonia ranks second at 46.64%, followed by Nigeria (33.59%) and Kenya (30.61%).

Going down the list from best to worst, the US is the first developed country to show up with a gain of more than 5%.  Canada has been the second best performing G-7 country with a gain of 3.83%, followed closely by Germany at 3.79%.   Britain, Japan, France, and Italy (the rest of the G-7) are all down year to date.

Russia is the only BRIC country up year to date with a gain of 2.71%.  India is down 1.54%, Brazil is down 4.91%, and China is down a whopping 18.96%.  Only Greece and Bermuda are performing worse than China so far in 2010.

As we've been highlighting for awhile now, the US is currently the place to be when it comes to equities.