European stocks once seemed more risky than they do now, with fund managers seeing more near-term upside in consumer goods and banks, and benchmarks in France, Germany and the U.K. rising, the Wall Street Journal's Liam Pleven and Sarak Krouse report.

Krouse and Pleven write that global fund managers have more of their portfolios in euro-zone equities than at any time since January 2008, and U.S. investors have flocked to Europe-focused equity funds, resulting in inflows of $3.7 billion this month through Wednesday.

Krouse and Pleven interviewed Michael Shaoul, chairman of Marketfield Asset Management [profile] , who said his firm has more funds allocated to Europe than any other regions outside the U.S. Krouse and Pleven quoted Shaoul as saying, "Europe is in a recovery cycle. It's in a bull-market cycle. And it's earlier in the cycle than the U.S. is."

Funds mentioned in the story include BlackRock [profile] iShares MSCI Europe Financials, Fidelity [profile] Europe Fund, Franklin Templeton [profile] Mutual European Fund and Vanguard [profile] FTSE Europe ETF.

To read more, click here.  

Edited by: Casey Quinlan


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