The US stock market – should you put more into the S&P 500?

The US stock market has seen ten years of stellar returns

(Image credit: © Gavin Hellier / Alamy)

published 20 October 2022

The US stock market has been the world’s top-performing market over the past decade.

Putting your money into a S&P 500 tracker fund would have given you around 15% per year in sterling terms (including dividends, before fees). Holding the MSCI World ex USA would have given you just 7%. Virtually nothing else would have come close.

Among developed economies, only Denmark returned around the same as the US stock market and that’s a tiny market driven by the success of insulin maker Novo Nordisk (50% of the index). Among major emerging markets, only Taiwan (powered by chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing) and India even got into double-digit annual returns.

Subscribe to MoneyWeek

Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE

Get 6 issues free

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg

Sign up to Money Morning

Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter

Very few international investors would have been solely invested in the US stock market. Yet at least tracking the MSCI World index, instead of trying to be smart by overweighting cheaper markets elsewhere, was the clever choice in hindsight.

How the US stock market beat the world

Whether US stocks do the same this decade really depends on whether the past decade was down to stronger growth, higher margins or stocks re-rating onto higher valuations – and whether those trends can continue or whether we should expect them to revert back to long-term trends.

Over the ten years to the end of July, US valuations contributed far more to returns than any other region, according to data from asset manager WisdomTree.

The S&P 500 returned 13.8% per year up to that point in US dollar terms, of which 3.83 percentage points was due to valuation multiple expansion (ie, higher price/earnings ratios). European stocks saw valuation changes provide 1.39 percentage points of growth, while valuation changes in Japan actually detracted from returns because multiples shrank.

Profit margins grew in both the US and Europe at a similar rate, contributing 3.5 percentage points to returns. US companies tend to have higher margins than the rest of the world – which all being equal means they may deserve higher valuations – but they didn’t expand margins notably faster then European ones.

On the other hand, Japanese margins expanded hugely, adding 8.9 percentage points to returns. The bull case for Japan – that companies could improve profitability – has worked out (helped by the weak yen), yet valuations didn’t grow.

Lastly, what about growth? US companies grew sales much faster than anywhere else, contributing 4.6 percentage points to returns. Japanese companies grew about half that, again helped by the yen, while European sales barely increased at all.

US stocks could hit turbulence

In short, pretty much everything worked in the favour of the US stock market over the past decade (including the strength of the dollar).

Some of these factors probably will do again. But it’s hard to see valuations expanding more if the US is tightening policy faster than the rest of the world.

That will be a substantial headwind, meaning the US stock market is unlikely to repeat its spectacular outperformance over the next decade.

Explore More

Cris Sholto Heaton is an investment analyst and writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2006 and was managing editor of the magazine between 2016 and 2018. He is especially interested in international investing, believing many investors still focus too much on their home markets and that it pays to take advantage of all the opportunities the world offers. He often writes about Asian equities, international income and global asset allocation.

Cris began his career in financial services consultancy at PwC and Lane Clark & Peacock, before an abrupt change of direction into oil, gas and energy at Petroleum Economist and Platts and subsequently into investment research and writing. In addition to his articles for MoneyWeek, he also works with a number of asset managers, consultancies and financial information providers.

He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and the Investment Management Certificate, as well as degrees in finance and mathematics. He has also studied acting, film-making and photography, and strongly suspects that an awareness of what makes a compelling story is just as important for understanding markets as any amount of qualifications.