Major global markets 2011 round-up

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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US Dow Jones – developed world’s best performing index!
 
First off, let me wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2012!
A year ago, the mavens of Bay Street and Wall Street were advising investors to buy North American and emerging market stocks, to increase exposure to commodities and to avoid U.S Treasuries and their substandard yields.
 
This advice, though deemed logical at that time due to US corporations holding healthy balance sheets with high levels of cash and a high US government debt, and the burgeoning demand of commodities and energy from hungry and robust emerging markets, proved to be almost wholly wrong. The recommended stock markets except for the US Dow Jones index swooned. So did most commodities. U.S. Treasuries, on the other hand, enjoyed a banner year. Unforeseen events like the Japanese earthquake/tsunami caused markets to tremble at first and then the unprecedented downgrade advisory on U.S. debt by S&P lead to last year’s largest drop in a single day in the markets. The Arab spring also had a dampening effect on the markets.
However, the European debt crisis, which started basically almost two years ago and should have been on the experts’ watch list as the most powerful item on the back burner that could flare up and cause market turmoil was given a great miss, and this is the proverbial ‘dark horse’ that took the markets down farther and kept them beaten down.
Here is a look at some major markets world wide. Note that the US and the UK who were considered to be in relatively worse financial shape at the outset of last year have outperformed Germany and the BRIC countries who were the darlings. Canada, another darling, saw its TSX suffer a double digit loss percentagewise.
                                                Dec 30, 2010 close      Dec 30, 2011 close            change        % change
Dow Jones (US)                     11,577.51                   12,217.56                           +640.05      +5.53%
S&P 500 (US)                         1,257.64                     1,257.60                             -0.04          0.00%
Nasdaq (US)                           2,652.87                     2,605.15                             -47.42       -1.80%
TSX     (Canada)                    13,433.22                   11,955.09                           -1,478.13    -11.00%
FTSE 100 (UK)                      5,899.94                     5,572.28                             -327.66       -5.56%
DAX (Germany)                    6,914.19                     5,898.35                             -1015.84     -14.69%
CAC (France)                        3,804.78                     3,159.81                              -644.97       -16.95%
Bovespa (Brazil)                   69,305.00                   56,754.08                            -12,550.92   -18.11%
MICEX (Russia)                   1,687.99                    1,402.24                               -285.75        -16.93%
BSE (India)                            20,509.09                  15,517.92                             -4,991.17     -24.34%
Hang Seng (Hong Kong)      23,035.45                   18,434.39                             -4,601.06     -19.97%
 
The Shanghai composite index lost 22% in 2011 extending a 14% loss from 2010 despite having an economy that is growing at the most rapid clip of all emerging markets. Japan’s Nikkei lost 17% and South Korea’s Kospi lost 11%. Certain frontier markets in Asia like Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Mongolia (yes you read right) had upward movements in their stock indices.

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