Many investors nowadays don’t seem to trust U.S. stocks. That’s a mistake.

There’s no better investment than U.S. stocks right now. Sure, some stocks are better than others. The energy sector still faces unique pressures thanks to cheap oil prices, and some high-multiple tech stocks that have flamed out are due for continued pain.

But don’t let a few ugly names or a slow start to the year dissuade you from investing in U.S. stocks right now. Here’s why:

U.S. against the world

Part of the reason investors should be biased toward U.S. equities in 2016 is that the alternatives are pretty bleak. True, the U.S. economy growing at a 2.4% rate and the flat stock market across the past year is not a call for fireworks. But growth rates elsewhere are much worse.

Yellen: U.S. not a 'bubble economy'

The story in emerging markets remains quite ugly, as Brazil faces its worst recession in decades and China’s industrial production continue to look anemic. While traders who caught a falling knife a few months ago may be sitting on profits in Brazil or China stocks in the short-term, the one-year returns for both regions look nasty. Brazil’s Bovespa 50 Index is off almost 25% in the past year, while the Shanghai SSE Composite is down more than 20%.

In fact, as trader Peter Brandt recently tweeted out (with data from Fitch), emerging markets are having their worst decline in GDP since the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

Outside of emerging markets, other Western markets don’t inspire confidence either. Thanks to talk of England’s “Brexit” from the European Union, the FTSE 100 index is down about 10% in the last 12 months. And Germany, the eurozone’s largest economy, has seen its DAX stock market index slump 20% in the past year as economic growth slowed to a paltry 1.5% annual rate as of the end of 2015.

And if you think foreign stocks look dicey, let’s not even get into global bond markets. Japan’s 10-year government bonds are actually yielding negative rates, and Germany’s 10-year bonds are effectively offering zero interest with yields recently touching as low as 0.08%. Emerging-market debt pays much better, but it comes with huge uncertainty — for instance, Russia’s 10-year bonds are yielding around 9% right now, but with the country’s economy reeling under cheap oil prices and economic sanctions, that is a risky play to make right now.

The recovery is real and durable

Yet the U.S. is not simply just the best of a bad bunch. In truth, there is a lot to like about the American economy. As I pointed out in a March column, the housing market is going strong based on a host of metrics, from tight inventory and rising prices to homebuilder confidence about future residential construction.

The jobs market continues to show strength, with unemployment at 5% and March numbers showing more Americans entering the workforce thanks to a better labor environment. The U.S. has been on a steady streak of creating over 200,000 jobs each month since 2014.

And while manufacturing gets a bad rap, even that is looking up lately with the latest ISM report showing better-than-expected growth to snap out of its slump. The services segment of the economy is also improving, as the ISM’s March services index rose to the highest level in three months, due in large part to better retail and healthcare spending trends.

Also, in March we saw an upward revision to fourth-quarter growth on the back of stronger-than-expected consumer spending.

Numbers like these seem to have convinced the rest of the world that our economy is going strong, too, based on the power of the U.S. dollar DXY, +0.03% . While the dollar slumped a bit late last year, before the Fed’s rate increase, the U.S. Dollar Index — a measure of the greenback against a basket of other currencies including the yen USDJPY, -0.15% and the euro EURUSD, -0.06% — remains up about 20% from 2014.

Market metrics look good

Stock market fundamentals are admittedly different than the macro picture, but many of those metrics are also encouraging.

For instance, the forward price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 SPX, -1.11% is around 16.6 right now. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the average forward P/E for the index from 1990 through mid-2015 is 16.5, so we are in line with historical norms.

Sure, certain stocks and sectors remain troublesome. But the fact that Chevron Corp. CVX, -0.73% is now expecting a loss of 11 cents per share instead of EPS of 55 cents as previously planned is not an indication of how the entire stock market is performing. Consider that the latest FactSet Earnings Insight report shows telecom stocks are expected to post 13.1% earnings growth, and consumer discretionary stocks is estimated to report 10% growth.

In fact, the charts show that the recent rally since February is not a head fake. In March, the three major U.S. market indices — the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.87% , S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.07% — each closed above their 200-day moving averages for the first time this year. And thanks to recent dovish talk from the Fed, stocks have pushed steadily higher in recent weeks on improving sentiment.

There are no sure things in investing, of course, but on balance U.S. stocks surely have many things working in their favor.