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“The more people who own little businesses of their own, the safer our country will be, and the better off its cities and towns; for the people who have a stake in their country and their community are its best citizens.” – John Hancock

Morning stock market summary

Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.  

After a shaky start to the year, US equities have more than stabilized over the last two weeks, and whether you’re talking about small caps with the Russell 2000 or large caps like the Nasdaq and S&P 500, the major averages are sitting on YTD gains of over 3%.  Not bad for just over three weeks!  You might be surprised to hear, though, that even with those strong performance numbers, European stocks are modestly outperforming the US on a MTD basis. After accounting for the impact of currency moves, the Vanguard FTSE Europe ETF (VGK) is already up over 4.7% YTD.

It’s been a good start to the year for European shares, but they still have a lot of work to do.  While the Russell 2000, Nasdaq 100, and S&P 500 have all been in well-defined uptrends, the same can’t be said for VGK which has been stuck in a downtrend since last fall. Not only does it remain in a rut of lower highs and lower lows, but it also isn’t even trading above its 200-DMA.