Why Europe's core versus periphery debate is redundant

Dividing Europe in to 'core' and 'peripheral' markets is an old debate, and now it makes more sense to distinguish between growth and no growth markets, explains Johan Jooste, UK chief investment officer at Julius Baer.

The European economic and market outlook is on the up. If you add together recent easing from the European Central Bank, robust purchasing managers’ expectations and continuing improvement in labour market competitiveness in countries like Spain, we can conclude that the eurozone growth outlook is strengthening. Investors should bias risk assets towards higher European exposure in the second half of 2014.  But you have to be nimble. Growth versus no growth For example, the core/periphery debate has largely played out in Europe, given how the value of Spanish and Italian government ...