Happy New Year and Bye Bye 2008

A final posting for 2008 ... and I thought it would be interesting to look at the major market indexes.

Now you may find this depressing, but it's not.

Let me show you what I mean:

• America’s Dow Jones industrial average dropped by over a third (33.84% to be exact), the biggest fall since 1931, whilst the S&P 500 is expected to
  be about 40% down;

• China’s Shanghai index is down 65%, the biggest drop in its history;

• France's CAC-40 is down 42%;

• Germany’s Dax-30 is down 40%, the second-worst performance in its history;

• Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 48%, also the second-worst market movement in its history;

• India's Mumbai index has been sliced in half, and is down by almost  52% on the year;

• Japan’s Nikkei is down 42%, a record fall since it opened in 1950;

• Singapore is halved (49.2% down);

• Sydney's stocks lost over 41% of their value; and

• UK's FTSE100 has lost more than 30% (31.3%), the worst year on record.

And that follows a rally, with the FTSE up 20% over its lowest point in October!

I think we can safely say that 2008 was a pretty bad year for financiers.  For example, the worst performing shares in the FTSE100 were HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland.  The best?  British Energy.

So let us have a bit more of that in 2009.

No, not more losses.

Let's have a bit more energy as things can only get better.

Happy New Year.