A summary of the movements of major global stock markets for the past week and various other measurement periods is given in the table below.
Click here or on the table below for a larger image.
The nascent stock market correction gained momentum over the past week on the back of growing concerns about sovereign debt issues, the sustainability of the global economic recovery and Chinese policy tightening. The MSCI World Index and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index declined by 2.6% and 3.1% respectively during the past week, taking the losses for January to 4.2% and 5.6%. Among mature markets, the Scandinavian bourses and Belgium bucked the trend, whereas Russia, Venezuela and Chile returned positive numbers among developing markets.
Top-performing indices this week were Estonia (+11.4%), Lithuania (+8.2%), Bangladesh (+5.7%), Slovakia (+3.5%) and Ukraine (+3.3%). At the bottom end of the performance rankings, countries included Luxembourg (-4.8%), South Korea (-4.7%), China (-4.5%), Japan (-3.7%) and Austria (-3.4%).
Notwithstanding the huge rally since the March lows, only the Chile Stock Market General Index – again a solid performer as a result of a positive assessment of Sebastian Pinera’s election victory – has been able to reclaim its 2007 pre-crisis peak and is now trading 8.8% higher.
As far as the US indices are concerned, Wall Street closed on a weak note, reversing gains of earlier in the week to record a third consecutive down-week. All ten economic sectors (as measured by the SPDR exchange-traded funds [ETFs]) closed lower, with the defensive sectors outperforming the cyclical ones.
The major moving-average levels for the benchmark indices are also given in the table above, with most trading below their 50-day moving averages. With the exception of the Chinese Shanghai Composite Index, all the indices are still trading above the key 200-day moving averages.
Of the 99 stock markets I keep on my radar screen, 40% recorded gains, 55% showed losses and 5% remained unchanged. The performance map below tells the past week’s rather bearish story.
Emerginvest world markets heat map
Source: Emerginvest (Click here to access a complete list of global stock market movements.)
