US equity driver: Companies and their leaders have become smarter

US equities have been very much the place to be in the past ten years. They have been a supremely performing asset class, driving the outperformance of developed markets.

Despite the uncertainties which Donald Trump's presidency brings today, as well as the fluctuations in the value of the dollar, the US still remains the model of corporate efficiency: a culture where companies and the people that drive them are revered without equivocation.  Companies and their leaders have become smarter: these days they are eschewing unrelated businesses in their quest for sectorial domination. As a consequence, the market share of the leading companies in many sectors has risen.  The strong have become stronger and in many cases have seen their margins and returns ...