I've expressed reservations before about the recent theory of global decoupling. The reasoning was that foreign markets would remain relatively immune to a major selloff (and possible recession) in the U.S. That view struck me as strange, especially with the close correlation that's existed between global markets over the past decade. Which is why Chart 1 shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. It shows a sampling of the world's major developed stock markets over the last year. And, not surprisingly, each and every one of them started to fall in November along with the U.S. market. Most haven fallen as far as far as the U.S., but they are falling. The only ones still in the black for the last year are Hong Kong (+26%), Germany (+12%), and Australia (+2%). The biggest yearly losers are France (-7%), Britain (-5%), and Canada (-2%). By comparison, the S&P 500 lost -6.5%.
