Global equities are crushing Wall Street in 2025, posting their strongest outperformance since the Great Recession, as trade deals, a sliding dollar and looser monetary policy overseas help fuel a historic reversal.
Through Aug. 13, the iShares MSCI All Country World Index Ex U.S. ETF (NYSE:ACWX) has surged 20.5% year-to-date, outperforming the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) by nearly 10 percentage points.
Global Stocks Eye Best Year Vs. US Stocks Since 2009
If that gap holds, it would mark the largest annual outperformance of international stocks over U.S. equities since 2009, when ACWX gained 33.2% versus the S&P 500’s 23.5%.
Since the financial crisis, U.S. stocks have consistently led global markets—outpacing them in all but two years, 2017 and 2022.
Over those 15 years, Wall Street has outperformed by a cumulative 115 percentage points, a trend widely referred to as “U.S. …