Announcer:
4 Your Money is brought to you by NelsonCorp Wealth Management.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
It’s now time for 4 Your Money. We’re joined by David Nelson, CEO of NelsonCorp Wealth Management. Welcome back, David.
David Nelson:
Thank you, Brandy. I appreciate it.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
So international markets have been performing quite well recently. Could you share some of your thoughts on that?
David Nelson:
Yeah, they really have. It’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen the international markets show decent returns. And certainly this past window that we’re looking at here as far as from the end of last year to now, it’s outperformed the U.S markets. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but probably the one that’s front and center as far as the most important has to do with a dollar, the influence of currencies as far as on markets. And as a general thumb, what you find is that when the dollar is working and working quite well, in other words going up, that’s going to be tough as far as on international investments, which was the case.
But as the chart that I brought along illustrates today, it’s going to show just the exact opposite. And if you focus on the far right, folks, you’ll get I think the image that we’re trying to illustrate here, and that is the top is the international markets, the S, the MSCI World Index, excluding the U.S, and on the bottom you have the U.S dollar. And it’s a important comparison here that we’re trying to make, is that typically when the dollar is weakening, international markets do quite well, which has basically taken place the last six months give or take.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
Okay. So what does this mean for viewers’ portfolios?
David Nelson:
Well, the key is going to be is the dollar continue the trend downward, and none of us know for certain as far as if that’s going to be the case or not, but we’re kind of moving in that direction. It appears that that’s probably the intermediate trend, maybe the long-term trend. Folks should be aware of that. And if that continues, we’re probably going to see movement upward as far as in the international investments.
Brandy Auterson-Hurst:
All right, David. Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today.