How Europe’s Unpopular Stock Market Is Quietly Beating Wall Street

Europe's stock market has a reputation problem. Investors have long treated the region as an afterthought next to Wall Street and fast-growing Asian markets, yet its benchmark index has quietly kept pace with, and at times beaten, the S&P 500.

That reputation is not entirely undeserved. Europe has fewer high-growth companies, shallower capital markets, and a long-term earnings outlook that has rarely rivaled the U.S. or Asia's fastest-growing tech hubs, which is part of why its recent run has gone largely unnoticed.

Europe's Underappreciated Rally

The Stoxx 600, which tracks 600 large, medium and small-cap companies across 17 European countries, is up 11% so far in 2026, trailing the S&P 500's record run of 13.2% over the same stretch. That figure covers 2026 alone, though.

Widen the lens to include 2025, when a surge in government spending across the continent jolted European markets back to life, and the comparison flips.

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