European equities have outshone their US counterparts since an autumn nadir as investors bet that cooling energy prices and a reopening China will soften the region’s economic slowdown this year.
The benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index has risen 18 per cent since bottoming out in late September, outstripping a 9.4 per cent gain for Wall Street’s blue-chip S&P 500 over the same period.
European equities have spent much of the period since the 2008 financial crisis lagging behind those in the US, where racier technology stocks in particular benefited from record-low interest rates and central bank largesse. The inflation-driven reversal of those policies last year sparked a stock market sell-off on either side of the Atlantic from which European equities have since bounced back faster than those on Wall Street.