With ongoing economic turbulence at home, European investments have been gaining traction among some North Americans looking for attractive valuations and robust growth prospects.
But while family offices and high-end investors are closely examining their global options, they’re not ready to give up on North American markets just yet. Instead, many family offices are in a holding pattern of sorts, contemplating dipping a toe into broader investment waters.
Mindy Mayman, partner, chief compliance officer and portfolio manager at Richter Family Office in Montreal, says many family office advisors are contemplating diversifying to markets outside of North America, but they are cautious.
“Nothing is risk free,” she says. “That’s the reason that I don’t think one should dismantle a long-term strategy in this type of environment.”
Europe holds some attractive qualities.
“Germany is running significant fiscal stimulus,” says Brain Madden, chief investment officer at First Avenue Investment Counsel in Toronto. “And other countries are freshly and urgently seeing the imperative to finally make good on their funding commitments to NATO.”
Fiscal stimulus in those jurisdictions could “add some life to an economy that’s been more abundant and markedly less dynamic than the U.S. economy in the last decade or longer,” he adds.
Some longer-term asset allocators may move money to Europe, or potentially to Asia, he says. But many, like his firm, are simply sitting tight. “We’re not doing that,” he says.
A new world order
Since Trump began announcing tariffs in March, U.S. equities have suffered. And, according to Bloomberg, European stocks have emerged clear winners worldwide. Eight of the world’s 10 best-performing stock markets are in Europe, among them Germany’s DAX Index, boasting a rally of more than 30 per cent in U.S. dollar terms.
A recent report from BMO Private Wealth acknowledges the attraction of stocks in Canada and Europe.
“We are reducing our general equity recommendation to market weight and taking our U.S. stock allocation to underweight—a first for the portfolio advisory team,” reads BMO’s Private Wealth Investment Strategy from April 2025. It says it is doing this due to deteriorating trends in inflation, growth and budget deficits, as well as concerning employment trends and a high concentration in the S&P 500.
“We are maintaining a slight preference for Canadian stocks,” reads the report. “We’re also suggesting a market weight position in Europe,” due to stimulus, increasing economic momentum and cheap valuations, as well as emerging markets, due to stimulus from China, better relative economic momentum and generally low valuations.
Robert Janson, co-CEO and chief investment officer of Westcourt Capital in Toronto, says, “You’ve got the biggest departure—or differentiator in performance, I think—in the past 20 or 25 years between the European markets and U.S. markets.” He believes this is partly due to Germany’s recent announcement of a trillion dollars in defense spending.
Mayman says there has been a lot of discussion about the demise of the West in favour of the East, a trend that could lead to more investment abroad. “Maybe this is a time to pay more attention to those additional areas,” she says.
She says that as the 90 countries affected by Trump’s tariffs negotiate new trade deals with each other—rather than the U.S.—new opportunities could materialize. “Maybe we need to be looking from an investment perspective to other regions of the world, because alliances may shift as a result of all of this,” she adds.
Taking a global perspective
Theresa Shutt, chief investment officer of Harbourfront Wealth Management in Toronto, says her firm is taking a global perspective in its investment philosophy.
“The funds that we’ve created in-house, in the public market and the private market, are all global,” she says. “We have a global equity fund that’s U.K., Europe, a little bit of emerging markets, obviously some U.S. and Canada, one strategy that’s North America-focused, and then our fixed-income strategies is fully global.”
Shutt says Harbourfront believes there’s more value in both Asia and Europe, because of its discounted valuations. “I think there is definitely opportunity outside of the U.S., and I think it’s wise to diversify beyond North America,” she says.
Regardless of increased interest in Europe and Asia, Janson predicts investors won’t turn their backs on the U.S. “Never count Americans out. Never count the Fed out. Never count the U.S. administration out,” he says.
One roadblock for many Canadian investors may be comfort level, he notes.
“You can buy an ETF, whether it be Europe or whether it be Asia, relatively quickly,” says Janson. But it’s difficult for Canadian family offices and other high-net-worth investors to have a perfect appreciation and local knowledge of what’s happening in Hong Kong, Beijing or elsewhere.
“People know what they know in their own backyard,” he says, “and feel a certain connection to the United States.”
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