One year into President Donald Trump‘s return to the Oval Office, global equity performance tells a story few U.S. investors would have expected: two country markets have outperformed the S&P 500 by almost 90 percentage points over the past year.
Despite Trump’s “golden age of America” promise, U.S. equities delivered solid but unspectacular gains.
However, investors who looked abroad — particularly to Peru and South Korea — captured outsized returns driven by powerful, but very different, macro themes.
According to data from CountryETFtracker.com:
- The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:SPY) gained 12.5%
- The iShares MSCI Peru And Global Exposure ETF (NYSE:EPU) surged by 106% and
- The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (NYSE:EWY) climbed nearly 100%.
Peru’s Rally Fueled by Commodities And Metals
Persistent geopolitical tensions, trade conflicts and war risks have driven investors toward hard assets.
As a result, Peru’s domestic stock market has been on fire, largely because it is heavily weighted toward basic materials and precious metals producers, sectors that have soared as global commodity prices climbed.
Gold has jumped by more than 75%, silver by about 210%, and copper by roughly 33% in the past year. Those moves have directly lifted Peru’s economy and its stock market — a market where basic materials names dominate the ETF’s largest holdings.
Of EPU’s top 10 holdings, eight are materials companies — and each surged into triple-digit territory over the past year, moving almost lockstep with soaring metal prices.
| COMPANY | SECTOR | EPU WEIGHT | 1-YEAR RETURN |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southern Copper Corp. (NYSE:SCCO) | Materials | 23.79% | +100.8% |
| Credicorp Ltd. (NYSE:BAP) | Financials | 21.60% | +89.0% |
| Hochschild Mining plc (OTC:HCHDF) | Materials | 5.72% | +165.0% |
| Compañía de Minas Buenaventura S.A.A. (NYSE:BVN) | Materials | 5.44% | +197.0% |
| Volcan Compañía Minera S.A.A. | Materials | 3.57% | +310.0% |
| Pan American Silver Corp. (NYSE:PAAS) | Materials | 3.17% | +177.0% |
| MMG Ltd. (OTC:MMLTF) | Materials | 3.12% | +243.0% |
| Triple Flag Precious Metals Corp. (NYSE:TFPM) | Materials | 2.61% | +145.0% |
| Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (NYSE:WPM) | Materials | 2.59% | +146.0% |
| Intercorp Financial Services Inc. (NYSE:IFS) | Financials | 2.57% | +61.0% |
South Korea: The Memory Chip Powerhouse
South Korea’s outperformance tells a very different story — one driven by AI-related semiconductor demand, not commodities.
The Korean market surged as global demand for memory chips overwhelmed supply, particularly in high-bandwidth and advanced memory used in AI data centers.
Supply constraints left orders booked years in advance, pushing margins higher and revenues sharply upward.
Critically, nearly 70% of EWY’s annual gains came from just two stocks — Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (OTC:SSNLF), up 180%, and SK Hynix Inc., up 260% — whose combined weight in the ETF amount to 45%.
Different Roads, Same Result
Peru’s rally was broad-based and commodity-driven — a classic boom in metals and materials tied to inflationary supply shocks and resource demand.
South Korea rode the technology wave, where AI infrastructure demand stretched memory chip capacity and boosted profits for its leading semiconductor makers.
The result: two markets posting near‑triple‑digit annual returns, outperforming the S&P 500 by nearly 90 percentage points.
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