U.S. equity markets in general are very expensive, while Japanese and European equity markets offer better investing opportunities, according to a panel of three investment strategists speaking at the Envestnet Advisor Summit in Chicago on Wednesday.

Heidi Richardson, global investment strategist at BlackRock, said her firm is overweight in Japan, and it also sees core European countries such as Germany performing well. The quantitative easing policy taken by the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank are weighing on those regions’ currencies and helping with their exports, she said.

“The QE program by the ECB is positive for the European equity markets and could be a good tailwind for countries like Germany,” she said.

Richardson said she would still avoid peripheral European countries like Greece that continue to deal with economic problems.

Most U.S. sectors, such as utilities, remain expensive, she said.

Part of the problem, she said, is that “there is no bad news priced in,” thus markets can become volatile after any news. For example, equities reacted last year to the Ebola virus outbreak in Africa (and the few cases in the United States), something the stock market would normally not have noticed.

“Now you don’t hear anyone talking about Ebola,” she said.

Richardson added that bond-like proxies such as real estate investment trusts will do poorly in 2015, as they have recently, in anticipation of a Federal Reserve rate hike.

Panelist Larry Adam, chief investment strategist at Deutsche Asset Management, agreed that valuations in the U.S. remain rich, but said that even though REITs may have a negative correlation with rising rates, they are still a worthwhile investment in the longer term.

“If you pan back and see why rates are rising, it’s because economic growth is happening,” Adam said.

For now, he said, those interested in the sector should consider shorter duration REITs like hotels or storage facilities.

The Fed will likely raise interest rates this year, Adam and Richardson said, but they don’t expect a string of interest rate hikes.

Adam said there are two reasons he expects the Fed to act on monetary policy this year. “One, I think they want to see what happens,” he said. If the U.S. tips back into recession, the Fed will want to have the option of using normal policy tools like lowering interest rates rather than resorting back to QE.

Second, he said, the Fed will want to start the process of raising rates this year to avoid any potential political implications in 2016, an election year.

The third panelist, Zachary Karabell, head of global strategy at Envestnet, said previously the Fed would rely on economic guideposts like unemployment to act on policy, but added that such signals may not be as useful given the persistent low inflation rates of the past few years.

“We might think that [inflation] rates are being artificially reduced,” he said. “But now that we’re six to seven years into it, when do we think things may be different?”

Given the way the global economy has acted since the 2008 credit crisis, it’s possible that anticipated outcomes based on certain events, such as inflation on economic growth, may need to be reconsidered, he said.

“Expected outcomes may not necessarily be what we thought before,” he said, which is why central banks now depend more on data before they make changes in monetary policy.