Wednesday’s rally has taken the Dow Jones Industrial Average to break even for the year. It has also outperformed many foreign stock markets.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 102.55 points, or 0.90 percent, to end at 11,518.85. For 2010, it ended at 11,578. The S&P 500 Index rallied 11.71 points, or 0.98 percent, to close at 1,207.25. The Nasdaq Composite rose 0.84 percent.

For 2011, the Dow has also outperformed many foreign equities indices.

Below is a comparison of the Dow and stock indices from Hong Kong, UK, and India (courtesy of Google):

U.S. stocks have outperformed many European indices due to the superior performance of the U.S. economy.

They have outperformed emerging market indices because the latter are still deflating from overvalued levels.

Moreover, U.S. stocks generally outperform emerging market stocks in periods of heightened uncertainty like late 2011. At the same time, many U.S. multinational corporations benefit from emerging market growth.

Equities all over the world rebounded in the past few trading sessions mostly on good headlines out of Europe, which calmed fears of a global banking crisis stemming from the European debt crisis.

Mostly recently, two top Eurozone officials, Olli Rehn and Jose Barroso, publicly urged Eurozone policymakers to step up their efforts to bail out European banks and Greece.

The European situation continues to inch closer and closer to some sort of solution, said Brad Bechtel, managing director at foreign exchange services firm Faros Trading.

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