Medal table of equity markets

The winter Olympic Games came to an end this weekend and we are many, next to admiring the athletic performances, to have taken a look on the medal table.

This prompted us comment on the development of equity markets since the beginning of the year. For Swiss equities, market closest to our concerns, the Swiss Performance Index SPI lost -4.1% until Friday last week. The picture is partially similar for international markets.

Developed markets such as the US (-1%), Japan (-2%), Germany (-5%) and the United Kingdom (-6%) have started the year in negative territory. For Emerging Markets the picture is brighter: while China remains flat and India (-6%) is in negative territory, Brazil (+12%) and Russia (+10%) lead the table.

Different than in sports, where victory or defeat is defined on D-Day, for equity markets, the form of the day is less significant. Here the race goes over a much longer period. And if the start in the New Year was not so successful, this does by all means not mean that the different markets cannot catch up with positive territories by the end of the year.