One of the benefits of being a financial advisor is the occasional one-on-one meeting you get with Portfolio Mangers (PM) and the opportunities to pick their brains. This week began for me by sitting down with AGF manager Richard McGrath, a PM based in Dublin who helps manage some global and european funds.

This was great opportunity to get some first hand information about what is going on in Europe. Following 2008, the Eurozone, easily the largest economy in the world, has been hit pretty hard. Strict austerity measures and public unrest have long painted a picture of a Europe constantly on the brink of failure. 2011 was easily the worst year as Greece got perilously close to defaulting on its debt as Germany and the Troika (the European Commission, the EU Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) played hardball looking for more political concessions from Greece.

The fact remains that big financial crises like 2008 have long tails, and Europe has been beaten-up very badly, with big reductions in their GDP, large unemployment figures and generally all-round bad economic news. And yet no storm lasts forever. Despite a difficult political structure, a burgeoning recovery seems to be underway.

Richard McGrath seems to think so at least, and I share many of his views. Some of the good news is really less bad news. For instance in Ireland continued austerity was expected to cut €3.6 billion from government spending, but as the economy improves that number has been dropped to €2.5 billion. There are lots of little stories like this helping to outline a general recovery in the Eurozone. Bloomberg reported on October 23rd that Spain had ended 9 consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, with an anemic 0.1% growth rate. Not great, but it still goes in the “good news column”.

It’s worth remembering that negative news abounds in the United States, but their stock markets have reached all time highs (again) and that after several bad years European markets have also done very well this year. But from the perspective of watching markets its important to take notice when GDP growth turns positive (Germany, France, Spain, UK – Societe Generale, September 9, 2013), investment flows start gaining (Societe Generale), all the while valuations are considerably lower, and therefore cheaper than other well performing markets (Thomson Reurters Datastream, October 21st, 2013). All of this points to one conclusion, you can’t trust the media. With it’s constant focus on negative news you might miss some of the best growth opportunities!