Tone-deaf comments from United Airlines’s CEO add to woes for the carrier this morning and shareholders, with stocks on a flight path to fall this morning.

That’s not going to help the S&P 500, which looks stuck in a rut right now. What investors should do, says Josh Brown of the Reformed Broker blog, is take a look at an unloved asset class that may just barrel past the S&P 500 this year.

He provides our call of the day, with this comment: “Foreign stocks are so despised (or ignored) at this point that it would make perfect sense for them to start a bout of outperformance vs. U.S. stocks.”

Investors who have been busy discussing whether the next 5% move for U.S. stocks will be up or down should remember that Wall Street stocks account for just over half of the global stock market. And “this ‘next 5%’ myopia could lead to missed opportunities,” says Brown.

Visual Capitalist Map showing top 20 exchanges by market capitalization

His team compared the first quarter and full-year performances of both the S&P 500 and MSCI All-Country World ex-USA index (using an index price net of dividends). They found that between 1970 and 2016, foreign stocks outperformed those in the U.S. in 22 of those 47 years.

But during those years where foreign stocks came out ahead in the first quarter, they beat the S&P 500 in 17 of them — 77% of the time, notes Brown. Of course, he points out that foreign stocks have fallen behind after great starts, with currency trends just one factor that can surprise.

Here’s his chart that shows 10-year rolling returns for U.S. and foreign stocks. The red line indicates where the S&P 500 is underperforming, and the green shows the opposite:

Reformed Broker

It’s not a perfect system, but, says Brown, the “rewards of diversification have a habit of showing up at precisely the time that we need them to over the long run.”

As for a way into that foreign side, there’s an ETF to that MSCI ex-USA index via ACWX ACWX, -0.14%  , or you could opt for the Vanguard Total International Stock ETF VXUS, -0.08% which is blue-ribbon rated at ETF.com.

Key market gauges

Geopolitical jitters over North Korea and Syria may be keeping a lid on stocks in a shortened holiday week. Dow YMM7, -0.04%    and S&P ESM7, -0.11%  futures are just about flat. The Nikkei NIK, -0.27%  got a boost from oil’s winning streak, with WTI crude CLM7, -0.07%  holding around five-week highs. The dollar DXY, -0.20% is seeing some pressure, notably against the yen USDJPY, -0.42%  while goldGCM7, +0.62%   is moving up.

The chart

Margin debt — which is basically investors taking on more debt to buy stocks — hit a high in nominal terms in February. That has had some concerned. But Callum Thomas, blogging for See It Market, says calm your fears, as the real story is in this chart:

The chart shows spikes or rapid acceleration in margin debt peaked in the crisis years of 2000 and 2007. But Thomas says at present, there’s no sign of a rapid dash into that debt. Nor is there any big rush to the exits — another reason this indicator is not much of a worry right now.

The economy

The post-election euphoria is running out of steam, going by NFIB’s small-business survey out early this morning. An update on job openings is due at 10 a.m. Eastern.

Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is set to take part in a Q&A at the Minnesota Business Partnership in Minneapolis at 1:45 p.m. Eastern.

Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen talked about the central bank letting the U.S. economy “kind of coast,” and of plans to “give it some gas,” but not too much, at the University of Michigan Monday afternoon.

The quote

“We will take the toughest counteraction against the provocateurs in order to defend ourselves by powerful force of arms. We will hold the U.S. wholly accountable for the catastrophic consequences to be entailed by its outrageous actions.” — That was a spokesman for North Korea’s foreign ministry early Tuesday in response to a U.S. Navy strike group sent to Korean Peninsula on Sunday.Source: marketwatch.com