The global economy, in aggregate, has been a bit of a disappointment during the past few years. After the big recession (2008/09), we experienced strong global growth but this slowed during 2012-2014 averaging a paltry 2.1%. All were to blame to varying degrees and time periods from the U.S., Europe, Japan and developing economies. But we may be on the verge of an uptick in global GDP growth and that has some big implications.

If the global economy is improving, that certainly has some positive implications for the TSX. While certainly diversified, our market still has a very healthy (or sometimes unhealthy) resource weighting.

In the U.S., the market overall is definitely richly priced with a 17x forward price-to-earnings multiple, but there are better valuations in many markets abroad and the difference between those regions and the U.S. - beyond lower price-earnings multiples - is that they are still receiving doses of monetary stimulus and benefiting from the tailwind of much more competitive currencies.

Earnings revisions are on the rise in the euro area, and the eurozone market trades at just a 15x P/E multiple with a near-4% dividend yield at a time when bond yields are close to zero or, in some cases, even negative out to the mid parts of the curve. And we still have the quantitative-easing program starting in the euro area in March. The history of QE in terms of its impact on the economy can be debated, but there is no debate about the impact it has on portfolio rebalancing and on investor behaviour.