Another One Joins The Bandwagon...

Now that European and Japanese stocks are near all time highs the research gurus at Goldman Sachs weigh in. Via Bloomberg

Goldman Sees Value Outside of ‘Stretched’ U.S. Equities

Goldman suggests investors look abroad.

“Stocks with attractive valuation are rare in the current environment of stretched share prices,” Goldman’s chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin and colleagues wrote in a Feb. 20 report, citing the ratio of price to estimates of future profit and the ratio of enterprise value to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. “The only time during the past 40 years that the index traded at a higher multiple was during the 1997-2000 Tech Bubble.”...

Investors looking for more attractive valuations need to go outside the U.S., according to Kostin’s team, provided they use currency hedges. (That seems to be a popular trade du jour, given the surging popularity of the WisdomTree Europe Hedged Equity Fund.) Goldman is forecasting 12-month, local-currency returns of 19 percent for Japan’s Topix Index, 17 percent for the Stoxx Europe 600 Index, where central bank easing is about to heat up big time, and 15 percent for an index tracking Asian nations besides Japan.