Markets mixed, US stocks outperform

Markets were mixed on Friday.

The S&P 500 rose 0.3 percent and the Nikkei 225 rose 0.3 percent but the Shanghai Composite tumbled 1.3 percent and the STOXX Europe 600 fell 0.1 percent.

“U.S. stocks are holding up relatively well, but if global sentiment sours, the impressive strength of the Dow Jones and S&P 500 could be chipped away at,” said David Madden, an analyst at CMC Markets UK, in a note.

For the meantime, though, the US stock market has outperformed the rest of the world.

“I think one of the biggest stories throughout the year has been the pressure we've seen on emerging markets,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James. “A lot of these countries have high levels of debt, so higher rates put pressure there.”

Ed Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research, Inc., thinks that it is not just about the risks in other countries. “I believe that the outperformance of Stay Home so far this year also owes a lot to Trump's stimulative tax cuts at the end of 2017,” he wrote.