Beginners Series Webinar: Join us on Monday, September 15st at 2 PM (ET) for our NDW Beginners Series Webinar. The week's topic is: Understanding Relative Strength (RS) & the Matrix. Register Here

San Jose RS Institute: Register to join us in person for a 3-hour educational symposium on relative strength investing. This event is for financial advisors and will offer 3 hours of CFP/CIMA credit.

When: September 18th, 2025, 9 AM EST - 12 PM EST

Where: San Jose Marriott, 301 South Market Street, San Jose, CA 95113

Who: Speakers include...

John Lewis, CMT, Senior Portfolio Manager; Andy Hyer, CFP, CIMA, CMT, Client Portfolio Manager; Ian Saunders, Senior Research Analyst

Cost: Free! Lunch will also be provided.

Registration is limited to the first 75 advisors, so be sure to act fast!

Click Here to Register!

International equities sit in second place DALI, after briefly taking the first spot in June earlier this year when they had a total of 241 signals. Since then, international equities have gained an additional 16 signals, bringing their total to 257 signals. Within our list of NDW premade matrices, several matrices could help investors generate new ideas for their portfolios. Using the “World ETF Matrix”, a matrix made up of a universe of 46 country-specific equity ETF’s, investors can identify which international markets are strongest. Among the many strong names, the Global X MSCI Greece ETF (GREK) ranks at the top of the matrix with 44 buy signals. Since the beginning of the year, GREK has climbed from 12th place to first.

Greece adopted the Euro as their official currency in the early 2000’s, although the country suffered from a large government debt, excessive public spending, lack of productivity relative to wage growth etc. By 2010, well after the great financial crisis was in full effect, yields on government debt soared as investors became weary of the countries’ credit risk. As inflation picked, Greece did not have a mechanism for keeping inflation under control, since the EU had implemented strong currency restrictions. What followed was a series of bailouts from the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), under the condition that the Greece would cut its government spending, renegotiate its debt with lenders, and improve the overall austerity of the country’s financial system. Fast forward to 2025, Greece has benefited from a stronger financial system, pushing its domestic equities higher and ultimately leading to Greece taking the #1 spot in the World ETF Matrix.

The Global X MSCI Greece ETF (GREK) into Xs from a low of $40.50 in early April and completed a double top break at $48.50. The fund now sits in multi-year high territory in the mid $60’s, up over 65% year-to-date. GREK maintains a fund score of 5.83, with a slightly negative score direction of -0.15, demonstrating the strength in recent months. The fund has been in a positive trend since late 2022 and returned to an RS buy signal against the market in March of this year. Additionally, GREK maintains a yield of over 4%. Long exposure can be considered here. Traditional support can be seen on our default chart at $40-$40.50.... a ways away. With that in mind, we can adjust our view to a $.50 chart and identify several areas close by littered throughout the low $60's and upper $50's. 

The correlation coefficient matrix below illustrates the relationship, ranging from -1 to +1, between the S&P 500 Total Return (SPY.TR) and the top 10 country ETFs from NDW’s World ETF Matrix, based on three years of data. The higher the positive number, the more highly correlated the country ETF is compared to SPY.TR. As shown below, the country ETFs offer a moderate correlation relative to domestic equities. If added to your portfolio, these international funds can enhance diversification, helping to reduce the impact of declines in domestic equities, thereby improving portfolio stability and mitigating overall risk

The last 15 years (minus a few hiccups here or there) have been dominated by United States equities. Attempts to pick up international exposure were largely unfruitful as US markets stormed forwards after brief stints of underperformance. International equity rallies were ultimately short lived… leaving with it a bad taste in investors mouths as trend followers got burned. All that said, 2025’s campaign is putting the markings together of something a tad bit different. ACWX is up over 22% this year, more than double that of the S&P 500. This marks the widest outperformance calendar year spread (through 9/10) since 2009, and one of now 12 years (of a possible 38) of international outperformance through nearly three quarters of the year. While 2009’s campaign ultimately saw ACWX underperform the S&P 500 for the rest of the year… a change in performance leadership for the rest of the year seems to be more of an exception than a rule. In fact, nearly 73% of the time (27 of 37) ACWX has continued to out/underperform after doing so through September 10th of a given year.

This is music to our ears for us trend followers. Consistent leadership can be a major tailwind for momentum focused strategies. While domestic leadership has been mostly consistent so far this year, it has been more evident on the international front. At first, developed markets were standouts as Europe has flexed its muscles at the top of NDW’s relative rankings (and still does…), but more recently emerging markets have perked up as China continues to advance. To gauge how strong these leaders are, Dorsey Wright typically uses a relative strength spread which pits a basket of winners against a basket of losers. The higher (wider) this spread is, the more constructive an environment. You can track this on the domestic front with ticker RSSPREAD on the NDW platform, but we included the international calculations below for you. The graphs depict largely the commentary mentioned previously: a consistent picture for developed markets and a improving picture for emerging.

Knowing a spread exists is one thing, taking advantage of it within a portfolio is another. To do so tactically, you could look towards a handful of NDW products. PIE & PIZ let you garner exposure to high relative strength names on the international front (emerging and developed markets, respectively.)  Both have strong fund scores based on NDW’s fund score methodology (4.64 & 5.44 as of 9/11). While swift upside action for PIE leaves it in heavily overbought territory at the time of this writing, the technical picture has improved quite notably over the course of the last month and interested parties could look to pullbacks towards old resistance in the low $20’s. For those not interested in adding further emerging market exposure while China/east Asia is at the helm, PIZ offers exposure to high momentum names across more international developed markets. With exposure littered across Europe (and a ~20% allocation to Canada), PIZ offers a different flavor of international exposure and remains tactical to adjust as trends shift. Both funds are up 25%+ so far this year (through 9/10) and out outperforming their respective emerging/developed market representative.

For those of you who don’t want to make a call on any one specific area of the globe but still want to remain tactical in your approach, you could look towards the likes of IFV or AADR. Both funds utilize the Dorsey Wright methodology to tactically rotate around the globe, picking technically strong ADRs (AADR) or a select five international funds (IFV) based on their long-term relative strength. Both funds have a strong fund score and have put together equally as impressive performance campaigns so far in 2025.

While it is too early to call if we are entering some sort of extended period of international leadership, finding ways to take advantage of other broad asset classes strength as it emerges can be a key to driving value for your clients. As always, continue to watch the charts and set alerts to find proper entry points.

This article is intended only for financial professional use only. Not Intended for retail investors.

Click here for more information from Invesco on the Invesco Dorsey Wright Developed Markets Momentum ETF: https://www.invesco.com/us/financial-products/etfs/product-detail?audienceType=Investor&ticker=PIZ

Click here for more information from Invesco on the Invesco Dorsey Wright Emerging Markets Momentum ETF: https://www.invesco.com/us/financial-products/etfs/product-detail?audienceType=investor&ticker=pie

Click here for more information from Advisroshares on the DORSEY WRIGHT ADR ETF: https://advisorshares.com/etfs/aadr/

Click here for more information from First Trust on the First Trust Dorsey Wright International Focus 5 ETF: ftportfolios.com/Retail/Etf/EtfHoldings.aspx?Ticker=IFV

Dorsey, Wright & Associates, LLC is owned by Nasdaq, Inc. and we have affiliates who also provide financial services, research, information, and act as Broker/Dealers to a wide variety of clients. Our affiliates use information we create to create indexes, which are then used to create Exchange Traded Funds. These things create a potential conflict of interest in that we may have an incentive to promote or use the products and services of our affiliates and business partners. A number of Dorsey Wright representatives are registered with and hold securities licenses with the affiliate broker dealers. In this capacity, they assist with marketing and distribution of Exchange Traded Products.

While we make every effort to be free of errors in this report, it contains data obtained from other sources. We believe these sources to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee their accuracy. Officers or employees of this firm may now or in the future have a position in the stocks mentioned in this report. Dorsey, Wright is a Registered Investment Advisor with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. Copies of Form ADV Part II are available upon request.

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