After two weeks of strong gains, European markets gave back some of this year’s early momentum with a modest pullback last week, with some suggesting that we may well have seen the peaks in the short term, in a manner similar to what we saw last year.
US markets had an altogether more mixed week with the Dow seeing its worst week since early December while the Nasdaq 100 finished the week higher.
While there may be some logic in the argument that we may have seen the peaks in US markets, given how they have performed in the last few months, there is less of an argument when you look at markets in Europe, which look set to open higher later this morning..
Valuations in Europe are lower to begin with, and on an income/dividend basis much more compelling, compared to the US, with the FTSE100 and DAX both trading on forward dividend yields of 3.77% and 3.36% respectively.
Nonetheless financial markets appear…


