If you chart the relative performance of US equities versus global shares excluding US stocks, you get a chart that looks like a hill you wouldn’t want to climb.

The post-pandemic years (and the phenomenon obviously dates back much further than that if you pan out) were defined by US dominance with only fleeting periods of RoW outperformance, raising all sorts of existential questions.

As the figure below reminds you, the situation when quasi-vertical in the lead-up to, and following, the 2024 election.

Again: That’s a hill you wouldn’t want to climb, and indeed if it gets much steeper, it’ll flip over backwards like the Meru poster.

Suffice to say the best argument for the “peak US exceptionalism” trade discussed here last week may simply be that nothing lasts forever.

In the same vein, Goldman noted that according to a new poll they conducted at a strategy conference in London (I’m sure that was a blast), nearly six in 10 PMs expect US shares to be the best-performing asset in 2025.

As the figure shows, that’s up 26ppt (!) from 2024, and a mile beyond any expressed preference for US shares recorded by the same survey going back to 2018.

The bank’s David Kostin summed up the mood. Clients, he said, told Goldman the US equity market “is destined to outperform.” He went on to say that CIOs Goldman dined with “in various European cities” this month expressed more or less the same view.

What could go wrong?, asks the tired old cliché. Kostin hinted at the answer.

“What is remarkable about the current consensus view of ‘US exceptionalism’ is how fervently fund managers believe in the thesis even after a decade of US outperformance and the fact the index trades at a massive P/E premium,” he marveled, noting that “the more that US stocks outperform, the more bullish investors have become.”