I have no idea what point is being made here or indeed disputed, but the first link GBI posted showed a market at over 15,000 in 2007, which fell below 7,000 and is now at about 12,000. While there has been plenty of movement along the way, "barely budged" seems a fair comment overall, on the 10 years.
actually cremegg i was trying to illustrate ( with that FT link ) how spain , italy ( and to a lesser degree france ) have barely moved in nearly twenty years , let alone since 2007 , i stand by that
broke my pledge not to comment again here but just wanted to clarify
i do accept that most funds or etf,s which covers europe have a disproportionate tilt towards the uk so spain , italy and france would perhaps not hugely effect the performance of broad based european funds but even the FTSE hasnt rose that much since 2000 , germany is the outlier
people often talk about the performance of emerging markets in isolation , why cant europe be looked at in isolation too , almost as if if the usa has a good run , europe is included as also having done well , europe always goes down if the usa does but doesnt alway go up , perhaps that might change but while all the chat on cnbc etc right now is how europe is a better bet going forward , this is more the case for americans who have seen a miles better return on european investments due to the very large fall in the dollar , you would almost think americans are in a very advantageous position most of the time over europeans when it comes to equities
example
january 1st a guy sitting in new york buys a dollar denominated etf which tracks the s+p , today he is up nearly 11 %
january 1st a guy in new york buys a dollar denominated etf which tracks the european market , today he is up nearly 19%
january 1st a guy sitting in dublin buys a euro denominated fund which tracks the s + p , today he is down nearly 2%
january 1st a guy sitting in dublin buys a euro denominated fund which tracks the overall european market , today he is up around 4.5%