The Most Important Charts In The World For 2026 Chart #3
Chart #3 SP500/MSCI World ex-US and USD
To conclude our series of The Most Important Chart In The World we have Chart #3, and it is a recycled chart from 2025. We didn’t want to do it, but we kind of had to.
Last year we showed a few different charts, but the first one was this one-SP500/MSCI World ex-US overlaid on the US Dollar-we used the Broad Trade Weighted USD Index, but you could use the DXY or the Bloomberg USD index and get a similar looking chart.
So why did we have to show this chart again? Well not only did it work out really well in 2025, but we suspect that this is just the beginning of a multi-year move.
In 2025 the SP500 did fine. It was up +17.9%. Great right? In a vacuum no one is going to be mad about that, but when you look at global markets it actually trailed. MSCI DM was up +21.6%, EM was up +34.4%, Japan was up +25.5%, UK FTSE was up +24%, MSCI Europe ex-UK was up +20.1%, etc. If you are noticing a trend, it is that global markets had a fantastic year.
Why did they beat out the US and why do we think this trend continues for a while, probably for years? Two main reasons. The first is simply valuations. US is very expensive vs the globe. The second is that US equities outperform global equities when the US Dollar is strong, and they trail global equities when the US Dollar is weak. And right now the USD is in a downtrend, and we suspect that continues for some time.
With that as the backdrop you can see why a chart like the one above or this one might make us think that being long global stocks is not only more interesting than it has been in years, but also that being overweight vs US equities could make a lot of sense.
Now before the doomers come saying “yep the dollar is crashing, and markets are going to lead us into the next great depression” let us be clear that this is a relative call and not an absolute one. US equities can continue higher in the face of a weakening US Dollar, it is just that they tend to trail global equities. At the same time a declining US Dollar doesn’t mean an outright crash, just that it has been strong against most major currencies for 15 years and for a host of reasons it is time for some mean reversion.
Conclusion
We think that all three of our “Most Important Charts In the World 2026” can be useful to help form some directional biases as well as longer term asset allocation decisions. While none of these are set in stone views-our views can change in the blink of a stop loss-they are at the top of our list of things to monitor into the new year.
Happy Trading,
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