This year international equity markets oscillated between sizable gians and equally sizable losses, with the continuing appreciation of the US Dollar significantly reducing the returns to US dollar based investor unless thier position were suitably hedged. Looking at MSCI equity market indices, All county ex US performence year-to-date through december 19th,in US dollar, reflected a decline of -8.37%, while in local currency terms there was an increase of +2.73% . For the advanced economies outside of North america, the corresponding index, EAFE, recorded a similar result:-6.97% in US dollar terms and +2.87% in local currency terms. Emerging merket were more volatile but with similar year to date returns: the EM index is down -5.97% in us dollar terms and up +1.10% in local currency terms