Emerging markets have come of age and are now consistently outperforming the developed world.

India's markets outperformed most global markets in 2003, and its economy was among the fastest growing in the world.

But the sovereign market is outperforming today, suggesting that investors see the news as a non-issue.

But European markets have also far outperformed the American stock market so far this year.

The market as a whole has outperformed inflation over the years.

In 2002, the fixed-income market outperformed stocks for the third consecutive year.

And the broader market, while not crashing through any particular barriers, easily outperformed the Dow.

The dollar has helped foreign markets outperform the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index many times.

That is hardly surprising, since overseas markets have been outperforming domestic ones in recent years.

Looking ahead to 1997, analysts said they were confident that their broad predictions would finally come true and foreign markets would outperform America's.