Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Update: Global Stock Market Performance

Here is an update of the global stock markets courtesy of Bespoke Invest (as of May 19th).
Justify FullAccording to Bespoke, ``After nearly every country was down earlier in the year, 62 out of the 83 are now up in 2009. Peru is up the most at 72.92%, while Costa Rica is down the most at -39.94%. And the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries are significantly outperforming the developed G-7 countries. Russia, India, and China rank 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in terms of year to date performance, and Brazil isn't far behind in 10th place. Canada has been the best performing G-7 country with a gain of 12.62% in 2009, but it ranks 35th out of 83. The rest of the G-7 countries are bunched up in the 0%-5% range, which is closer to the bottom of the list than the top. And the US is the worst of the seven with gains of less than 1%. While the markets here in the states have rallied nicely off of their March lows, most other countries have bounced back even more 2009." (bold highlight mine)

We'd like to add that the top performing benchmarks can be be categorized by region. For instance for the top 10: 4 comes from Asia (India, China, Taiwan and Indonesia), 3 from Latin America (Peru, Argentina and Brazil), 2 for Europe (Russia and Ukraine) and Israel.

The Philippines ranks 23rd.

We'd like to also take note of the underperformance of several Emerging Market bellwethers relative to the developed counterparts can be distinguished regionally-many are from Middle East and Africa and are considered frontier markets (smallest EM bourses).

It is important to emphasize that 62 gainers out of 83 has been a gradual broadening of gains or a "rising tide lifts all boats" phenomenon. This implies that markets appear to be responding to collective governments inflationary measures.


Nonetheless, global equity benchmarks have been outperforming the US.

From Bespoke, Since March 9th, major US stock indices are up 25%, but since other countries are outperforming, the US' market cap as a percentage of world market cap has actually fallen about 75 basis points. It initially spiked in the early days of the rally, implying that the US sparked the global rebound, but as the rally progressed, investors have spread their sights elsewhere."

The US underperformance should be expected considering it has been the epicenter of today's crisis and where its banking system has been impaired and has been operating under government support.

Moreover, deflationary pressures still poses a threat which means more inflationary activities by the US government.




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