US vs International Returns

Below is a chart showing how US investments perform compared to international investments. The red bar in the middle of the chart represents the return of US stocks. As you can see, there are plenty of countries that consistently have better returns than US investments.

International market investments

Average annual stock returns in many nations have outpaced those in the U.S. for the 10 years ended 12/31/03.

Ssource: Morgan Stanley Capital International indices as reported by Lipper Inc., based on annual total returns in U.S. dollars of indices that are unmanaged composites of equities.