2019 Country Valuation Dashboard

2019 is a good year to start off with a country valuation dashboard, given how most of 2018 was a story of US stocks outperforming most other countries’ stock markets, at least until December.  Despite last month’s correction, US stocks remain relatively expensive compared to most other countries’ markets, with the US S&P 500 still trading at over 18 times last year’s earnings (and over 14 times analysts’ forecasts of 2019 earnings), while half of the 48 markets listed here trade at or below 13 times last year’s earnings (I explained the importance of the simple P/E ratio in the earlier post “how to make money in stocks“).  As additional metrics, the S&P 500 is also more expensive as a multiple of book value (3.1x US book value vs a median of 1.6x for these other countries, though high-value US tech explains much of that), and the S&P 500 also remains less volatile than most foreign markets with a monthly standard deviation of less than 13 vs a median of 19 below.

The 2019 Country valuation dashboard

This valuation dashboard table lists 48 markets outside the US, with ratios measured by their US-listed, MSCI benchmarked single country ETFs.  Most of the ETFs are iShares ETFs, though there are several by Global X and one China A-share one by KraneShares.

US vs Non-US stock performance, 2015-2018

For reference, below is a quick performance chart of how US markets (SPY) performed vs non-US markets (ACWX) over the past three years.