There's Going To Be One Hell Of A Hangover When The Market Party Ends | Louis Gave

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**Louis Gave** (1:00)
So the old story with tequila shots, right? You never know when you've had too much until when you had enough until you've had too much.

**Adam Taggart** (1:06)
Right. Exactly. Yeah.

**Louis Gave** (1:07)
And that's that's the story. That's the story of every boom. You never know when you've had enough until you've had too much.

**Adam Taggart** (1:20)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money, I'm Thoughtful Money Founder and your host, Adam Taggart. Very excited for today's discussion.
International stocks have outperformed the S&P, or at least are outperforming the S&P so far. Again, here in 2026, they also outperformed it in 2025 Is that where the opportunity increasingly is going to lie for investors? To find out, we're very fortunate to be speaking today with Louis Gave, founding partner and CEO of GovColl. Louis, how are you?

**Louis Gave** (1:47)
I'm doing great, thanks. How are you doing?

**Adam Taggart** (1:49)
I'm doing very well. Thanks so much for joining us while you're on the road.

**Louis Gave** (1:53)
Pleasure. It's great to be again, great to be with you.

**Adam Taggart** (1:56)
Well, Louis, look, I always love talking to you because you're one of the relatively few people that I interview whose focus is really primarily markets outside of the US. But one of the things that I appreciate very much about you is that you spend most of your time outside of the US. So you really have a very on-the-ground view of a lot of these markets. And in our past couple of conversations, you have been pretty optimistic about where the opportunity lies, meaning the majority of it do you think you see outside the US. And as I said there in the intro, past couple of years, international markets actually have beat the S&P. So let me ask you this.
Right now, what trends, international or otherwise, are grabbing your attention the most as an investor right now?

**Louis Gave** (2:48)
So to be honest, the trends internationally are not that different from trends you see in the US. I mean, this year, it's very much been a case where if you bought Semi-Conductors, if you own Semi-Conductor stocks, you've had a monster year.
And if you didn't, then you didn't. And to be honest, it's been that plain simple. And you see this in the divergence within the international markets. So Korea this year has absolutely ripped. And Korea, of course, is extremely heavy on with Samsung Electronic, SK Hynix, obviously Taiwan with TSMC. Japan also has a lot of Semi-Conductors. So North Asia has done exceptionally well. The rest really has done pretty poorly.
If you look at year to date, some of the big European markets like Germany and France, it's been a little lackluster. Hong Kong has been extremely, extremely disappointing. And here there's an interesting divergence between Chinese stocks listed in China that have done well over the past 12 months. Shanghai has done okay. Shenzhen has crushed it. And Hong Kong, which is actually down over the past 12 months. So a divergence, there's a few factors behind this divergence. But one of the biggest factors is that in China, you have a fair amount of tech hardware stocks listed. You see my conductor names, but other other guys in the tech hardware chain. And in Hong Kong, you don't. And so it's in that respect, I think if you look at the US performance this year, if you own software stocks, you've had a miserable year. Just as if you're on health care and if you're on staples, and if you own a lot of consumer discretionary, you've had a pretty miserable year in the US. If you own tech hardware stocks, you've laughed all the way to the bank and you had a monster year. And I think that trend has been a global trend. So in the introduction, you said, oh, international stocks have outperformed this year. You strip out the CMI conductors. But then again, you strip out the CMI's. I should do the exercise actually, if you strip out the CMI's out of the US. Because in the US., CMI conductors are now 18% of the index, which is kind of mind-blowing, right? I mean, here you have the sector that historically is perhaps one of the most cyclical and most capital intensive sectors.