Please stay tuned for important disclosure information at the conclusion of this episode.

Hello, and welcome to a bonus episode of the Morning Filter podcast.

I'm Susan Jubinsky.

Now, my co-host, Dave Sikara and I have gotten a lot of questions from our audience about topics that you'd like to hear more about, and we hear you.

So we're doing some bonus episodes

of the podcast, sitting down with various Morningstar experts to discuss topics that you want to hear more

about. If you have an idea for a bonus episode, you can send it to us at our email address,

which is the morning filter at Morningstar.com. Now our bonus episode today covers international investing.

International stocks outperformed U.S. stocks last year and we've gotten questions about

whether that outperformance can last and where the opportunities are today. So joining me to discuss

the topic is Morning Stars Michael Field. Michael is Morningstar's chief Europe market strategist,

and our conversation is taking place on Tuesday, February 3rd. Welcome back to the

Morning Filter, Michael. Thanks for having me back, Susan. Now, I recently watched your

2026 Outlook webinar, which was really, really a great piece of research. And we're providing a link to

that webinar in the show notes. And I encourage everyone to watch it. Now, you noted in that presentation

that, you know, the macroeconomic situation in Europe has been improving. Yet despite, you know,

good news on inflation and growth and interest rates, you say that uncertainty is on the rise.

So explain that.

So I think it's good to check in with this, actually, because since we did that podcast, obviously,

even more has changed with the macroeconomic environment.

It's been the most volatile January that I remember, really.

Some events, you know, like the Venezuelan president being brought into custody don't really have any effects on markets necessarily,

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