U.S. equity market's strong performance, relatively speaking?

The general wisdom seems to be that the U.S. equity markets have had an exceptionally strong performance in 2009. They certainly have bounced back but the back page stats in this week's "The Economist" had an interesting table. It showed the full year 2009 to date performance of all viable global financial markets on a currency weighted performance basis, that's putting all performances in dollar terms.

On this basis the U.S markets are as stated with the Dow up 19% and the S&P up 23%, all fine at the start. On a dollar weighted basis, however, many other markets seriously outperformed. Looking primarily at some major economies and excluding those like Russia, Venezeula and a few others with serious inflation issues, what we see for 2009 on a dollar weighted basis for equities is Canada up 55%, Brazil up 148%, Germany up 31%, China up 79%, Singapore up 66%, Britain up 39%, the Euro area as a whole up 30%, Emerging markets as an index up 73%, the MSCI(developed world as a whole) up 32%, Australia up 71%, I could go on but you get the picture.

With the dollar declining in value, interest rates at rock bottom, the stimulus effectiveness in question, and growth not yet especially apparent, U.S. equities have broadly underperformed global markets in 2009. Even those in the U.S. with nice gains in their portfolios have been seeing, or not seeing but experiencing anyway, a material decline in their relative performance and purchasing power.

There are so many tangential and derivative points to this thought that saying more would ultimately go nowhere, at least not here. The stats on equity markets by themselves are just interesting, no matter what one's interpretation, and those stats are certainly not present in media discussion or even some serious discussions of U.S. equity market performance.