The S&P 500 Index is on pace for its strongest January in 15 years, while European and Asian stock markets are doing even better. Last week, the Dow Jones Europe stock index rose 2.71% — led by Greece, at 12% (for now) — while DJ’s Asia/Pacific index rose 3.12%, led by Hong Kong (4.5%). These foreign stock markets are reflecting strong economic growth in Asia and some better-than-expected bond auctions in Europe.

On Thursday, $8.5 billion in 10-year Spanish bonds had a very successful auction. With a healthy bid-to-cover ratio of 2.17, robust demand delivered lower yields. Another piece of good news in Europe is that Germany’s ZEW indicator of economic sentiment rose by 32.2 points on Tuesday, reaching its highest level in seven months. Clearly, the mood of many Europeans is picking up.

On Tuesday, China’s National Bureau of Statistics announced that Chinese GDP grew at an 8.9% annual pace in the fourth quarter. Even though this was China’s slowest GDP growth rate since mid-2009, it beat economists’ consensus estimates of 8.6% and was just a minor drop from the 9.5% annual GDP growth pace in the third quarter. Now that China’s Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) is back above 50 and its industrial production is up 12.8% (annual rate) in December (versus 12.4% in November), perhaps the fourth quarter represented the trough for China’s economic “slowdown.”

So with economic growth looking up in the U.S., China and Germany — the world’s top economies — global stock markets scored big last week.

The biggest international wildcard continues to be Iran. European leaders will vote this week on economic sanctions and an impending oil embargo. Interestingly, Greece (which imports significant amounts of Iranian oil) asked the European Union to make last-minute concessions regarding the impending EU embargo on Iranian oil. Apparently, Greece imports Iranian oil under highly favorable terms that are hard to match elsewhere. This means the EU oil embargo could be delayed.