Thanks to the recent rally, you may be feeling pretty good about yourself. After all, as of Thursday's close, everyDow member was up in value since March 9, with middle-of-the-pack companies such as Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), and Merck (NYSE: MRK) posting gains of 40% or more!

If you're new to the market, you may be thinking that this stock picking stuff is easy money. It's not -- and this recent rally cannot continue. It's not in the nature of U.S. large caps to offer such steady, significant returns. This market is seriously out of whack.

That makes no sense
And while Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has declared the recession "very likely over," unemployment, still hovers close to 10%, the credit markets are still anemic, and consumer activity -- as with "Cash for Clunkers" -- is being subsidized by the government

You may say, "Yeah, but the market is forward-looking." Sure it is, but it's not thatforward-looking. Tack on the inflation that's likely to result from rampant deficit spendingand, well, tread carefully in U.S. stocks.

What you can do
It's for these reasons that we continue to look outside the U.S. for compelling stock ideas at Motley Fool Global Gains , and why we're particularly excited about the opportunities in China, Brazil, India, Chile, and Peru.

Stocks in these countries today offer better valuations relative to their future growth prospects -- and many have been left behind by the recent rally. And the advantages over the U.S. aren't necessarily the same from country to country.

India has a younger workforce; Chile a large budget surplus and abundant natural resources; China a massive population with significant personal savings; Brazil and Peru growing resource economies that are developing stronger and stronger ties with China. Thus, these countries can hold up to some degree even as the U.S. falters, though complete decoupling is unlikely.

China's tiny Yanglin Soybean , for example, is actually down almost 40% since March 9 and now trades for a paltry 0.2 times revenue and 4.3 times EBITDA. Yet this is a company that pays no taxes to the Chinese government, since it's been classified as a Key Leading Enterprise in Agriculture and is helping that country achieve its strategic goal of becoming food independent.

But if you look up Yanglin Soybean, you may be scared off. It trades over the counter, the stock is illiquid, and the board has no independent directors. There's no way to be sure that the company cares a lick for outside shareholders.

It's time to take off the training wheels
These are legitimate concerns. But I've already triedto assuage them. So today I point you to Baupost Group's Seth Klarman's 1997 letter to shareholders:

I frequently hear the argument that the rules are different overseas: the accounting murky, the annual reports unreadable, the currencies sometimes unhedgable. All of these points are fair, but, rather than being arguments to avoid foreign markets, they are instead arguments to embrace them. After all, as an investor you never have perfect information, and the biggest profits are always available (just as they have been in the U.S.) when competition and information are scarce. The payoff to fundamental analysis rises proportionately with the difficulty of performing it.

Yes, I added that emphasis, because it's such a key point. Klarman goes on to say that the highest return -- the realmoney -- is made in markets where information is scarce and management teams are not yet obviously shareholder-oriented. Continued...