Peter Moeschter, executive vice-president, Templeton Global Equity Group, at Franklin Templeton Investments Corp., says the global equity market is being hampered by investors' concerns about the sustainability of both global economic growth and corporate earnings.
"The developed-country equity market has produced modestly negative total returns for approximately two years," says Moeschter. Besides the ongoing concerns among investors as to the direction of global economic growth, valuations in some key developed-country markets, such as the United States, have remained fairly high, he says. "This has also weighed on the overall performance of these markets."
The MSCI World Index, which covers 23 developed countries, produced a negative total return of 0.2% in U.S.-dollar terms for the first three months of 2016 and a negative total return of 2.9% for the 12 months to the end of March 2016.
