PITY THE broker of European shares. He spends his afternoons making calls to investors in America. Few are returned. His clients are tired of Europe and its vaccine snafus. Even a good-news story, such as Mario Draghi becoming prime minister of Italy, has little traction. Italy is central to the fortunes of the euro zone. Mr Draghi is a reformer to be reckoned with. But a lot of people think the country cannot be fixed. “If God descended from heaven and became Italy’s prime minister,” says a hedge-fund boss, “the market still would not rally.”
The story of 2021 is that America’s economy is reopening with a bang. By comparison, everything in Europe looks sluggish: GDP growth, the roll-out of vaccines, the deployment of fiscal policy, slow-moving companies, and so on. That lack of urgency extends to the stockmarket. Europe has no FOMO (fear of missing out), says Graham Secker of Morgan Stanley, a bank. It is wholly lacking in the froth so evident in America. Yet that is probably a good thing. Because—whisper it—so far this year the euro-zone stockmarket has managed to keep up with America’s.
