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Happy New Year and Bye Bye 2008

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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.

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Chris M Skinner

Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...

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