The U.S. stock market lags behind dozens of countries, even in a year of record highs

For only the third time in 10 years, one of America’s most broadly representative stock indexes, the S&P 500, is poised to give up its longtime spot as the world’s top performing stock index.

But drill down deeper, and the scale of the S&P’s underperformance becomes even starker.

Ranked against dozens of other countries’ indexes, the S&P’s annual performance so far is not even among the world’s top 20. Or the top 30, or 40.

With annual returns of 16% through Monday, the S&P lands in 41st place among more than 60 stock indexes around the globe, according to an NBC News analysis.

This number requires a few caveats, however.

The companies in the S&P have created more value so far this year than listings on any other country’s index — more than $7.7 trillion in market value.

That exceeds the annual economic output of every country on Earth, except the U.S. and China.

Likewise, more than 5,400 companies choose to list their shares on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq, according to the World Federation of Exchanges.

This combined total gives the U.S. clear standing as the No. 1 destination for publicly traded companies outside of China.

Still, the S&P’s relative performance this year is remarkably out of line with historical norms.

On Wall Street, even the most bullish predictions for where the index will land at the end of 2025 would only bring the S&P just in line with the performance of most international markets.

Another way to compare the S&P’s performance against the rest of the world is by comparing its returns to the MSCI All Country World Excluding U.S. Index, which tracks the indexes of 46 countries.

The S&P 500 currently trails this index by more than 10%.

That places the S&P on track to broadly underperform the rest of the world this year for only the third time in a decade.

The first time, in 2017, after President Donald Trump assumed office for his first term. The most recent instance happened in 2022, when stocks tumbled in response to significant interest rate hikes to combat post-pandemic inflation.

This gap in performance partly reflects the trade uncertainty that has cast a shadow over the U.S. economy since Trump began his second term in late January.

Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff policies have caused investors around the world to look beyond the United States for more stable, safer opportunities.

America’s mounting debt, a sinking U.S. dollar and Trump’s attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve have also given investors pause.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After Trump won the 2024 election, stocks had a strong start to the year. Markets hit record highs in mid-February. But on worries about his tariff policies, markets plunged in March.

When Trump rolled out his long-promised tariff policies in early April it sent markets spiraling further, with more than $5.8 trillion of value erased from the S&P 500 in a matter of days.

On April 9, Trump announced he was pausing most of his global tariff rollout. Markets soared and the S&P 500 posted its third largest one-day gain in history.

The Supreme Court is now considering the fate of Trump’s sweeping tariff agenda.

If the administration loses, it could trigger refunds of the duties paid by importers due back to them, forcing the Treasury Department to issue new debt to pay for them, which could drive up yields.

While tariff uncertainty has remained and the administration’s trade agenda has hit a number of speed bumps, most notably with China, equities have been buoyed by the rapidly expanding artificial intelligence boom.

Trillions of dollars are being poured into the industry by companies and investments have sent the values of firms such as Nvidia, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet soaring to market values as high as $5 trillion.

The U.S. currently has nine companies trading above $1 trillion in value. Fears have grown about a potential bubble in the sector.

But still, the performance of U.S. stocks broadly lags the world by a wide margin.

With AI and tech stocks fueling the momentum, a look at the other 493 companies in the S&P reveals some major differences.

For the third quarter, those seven tech stocks are expected to post earnings growth of nearly 15%. The other 493 companies? The expectation is just 6.7%.

“The economy is running at two speeds,” ABN AMRO senior economist Rogier Quaedvlieg wrote Tuesday. “AI and related sectors are thriving, whereas most other areas are stagnant or contracting.”

Through Monday, South Korea’s Kospi index held the No. 1 spot. The index that trades on the Korea Stock Exchange has posted a return of nearly 70% this year.

“While semiconductor exports remain Korea’s central growth driver, the country is also emerging as a formidable defense exporter,” Franklin Templeton’s Dina Ting recently wrote.

“Additionally, South Korea’s stock market has been buoyed by the rebound in its technology sector, notably semiconductors, as demand for memory chips recovers globally,” Ting added. “The country’s leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and AI-related investment are key drivers of this momentum.”

After South Korea rank the likes of Kenya, Nigeria, Chile, Poland, Pakistan, Israel, Spain, Czechia and Jordan to round out the top 10.

Not until more than 40 countries down the ranking does the S&P 500 appear.

One of the ways that trade policies and tariffs have made the gap between the U.S. and other indexes wider than it might otherwise be is by weakening the U.S. dollar.

The sinking dollar has helped propel international indexes higher. As the dollar weakens, the values of foreign investments and stock returns rise by comparison. In turn, a rising or stronger dollar would dampen the relative return of money invested outside the U.S.

The Dollar Index, a measure of the U.S. currency’s strength against a basket of foreign currencies such as the pound, yen, euro, Swiss franc and Canadian dollar, has sunk 9% since the start of 2025.

The continued erosion in the dollar’s value makes it more expensive for American companies and consumers to import goods, go on vacation or send money abroad.

“I see signs that the attraction of the dollar is slightly eroded, and [the] future will tell whether there is more erosion of that,” European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde told CBS News in October.

“For a currency to be really trusted you need a few things,” she said. “You need geopolitical credibility, you need the rule of law and strong institutions. And you need a military force that is strong enough.”

“I think on at least one and possibly two accounts, the U.S. is still in a very dominant position,” Lagarde continued. But the central banker warned that the U.S. “needs to be very careful because those positions erode over the course of time.”

Not everyone agrees.

“The dollar’s been on a pretty good run over a long period of time and it’s certainly given back — this year given some of the policy actions — some of the gains, but fundamentally the dollar is the reserve currency of the world,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said on Bloomberg Television on Oct. 30. “I don’t see anything at the moment that threatens that.”

“I think it’s something to watch, but I’m not concerned that there’s some fundamental shift,” Solomon said.

CORRECTION: (Nov. 11, 2025, 6:17 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated how many times in the last 10 years the S&P 500 has not been the world’s top performing stock index. It’s the third time, not the second. And a graphic misstated the S&P’s performance in 2022. It was negative 19.4%, not positive.