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To: Tulvio Durand who wrote (22898)	5/27/1998 8:04:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 95453

*OFF TOPIC** US/European Markets Tulvio, of course the traditional view is that the U.S. stock market leads other world markets, including the Western European one. It's just that I question that view. It's more gut feeling on my part than anything else. I guess I am (overly, perhaps) conscious of the fact that nobody ( and no country) can be Top Dog forever. (It just takes Top Dogs a while to realize it.) The Western European stock markets - viewed as a whole - have been outperforming the U.S. market for about a year now, and by a very large margin. (And I presume you've noticed that the oil service ADRs - CXIPY, GGY, etc. -- have been outperforming their U.S. counterparts.) That's leadership of a sort, wouldn't you say? The strongest economic growth (and the hottest stock market) has been in the "less developed" Western European countries, that is, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland(the Republic of Ireland). (I omit Greece, only because it is not in "Western" Europe.) If monetary union goes ahead as scheduled, you will have a new economic entity on a par with the US in many respects -- population, size of economy, and size of "pooled" stock markets. Americans, as a group, tend not to pay much attention to what is going on outside their borders, unless it is Bad Stuff that can hurt their pocketbooks (e.g., the Asian crisis). They don't see the Good Stuff or the Neutral Stuff until it goes Bad -- which I am afraid could happen with Europe. The introduction of the Euro may not go so smoothly, in which case I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts the U.S. market will react -- and how! Of course, I'm no economist, and I could be spouting hooey. Let's hope so. jbe