US underperforms core regions including UK

The US market has been fairly difficult during the year, and fund returns have been considerably lower. This is true in two respects. Firstly, average returns in the equity US sector are only about a third of those the year earlier, while returns for funds investing in smaller companies is an even lower fraction. The other aspect to this is that the category has also underperformed many other core regions such as the UK and Europe. Uncertainty in key factors such as increasing interest rates and oil prices, the political environment - particularly relating to Iraq and the US elections - c...