Europe - Growth of world trade gives cause for optimism

Stockmarkets around the world have fallen over the last year thanks to the bursting of the credit bubble and higher oil and commodity prices. Despite this, many European companies have seen their shares perform relatively well. This European 'conundrum' - where equities have outperformed but economic growth has underperformed relative to the world - is explained largely by the high proportion of company earnings that are derived from emerging markets. Germany and Finland, for example, have a strong exporting tradition to the faster-growing economies of Eastern Europe and Russia; Spain a...