Like a row of bottles, the world’s stock markets fell one by one – with one defiant exception among the twelve that we cover this month.
December saw an interest rate rise in the US, the UK vote for air strikes against IS and George Osborne’s ‘Northern Powerhouse’ largely under water.
November brought us the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement and Spending Review in the UK. In Europe, there were the tragic events in Paris on November 13th.
Well, what a splendid month October was, with all the major world stock markets that we cover in this Bulletin skipping merrily upwards. Germany and China led the way with gains of 12% and 11% respectively, and if you only looked at the figures you’d be quite justified in thinking that everything in the world economic garden was rosy.
The end of the third quarter of 2015 was, as all the financial press reported, the worst for global equities since 2011.
Never was the statement “Markets can fall as well as rise” more true than in August, when virtually all major markets headed down.
July was a busy month. Greece held a referendum on austerity – with an emphatic rejection, before a bailout on the same lines as the rejection was finally agreed. The Chancellor delivered his second Budget this year whilst Chinese markets fell dramatically.
An essential part of writing this bulletin each month is making daily notes on the main business and stock market news. This month we have comfortably broken our record – more than six pages of notes. And as you might expect, about half of those pages are about Greece and its debts.
May saw the election of a Conservative majority Government, whilst in Europe, Greece teetered on the edge of default, Germany and France edged towards closer European ties. The Nasdaq index in the USA reached a record high. Chinese exports fell and the Japanese economy grew. There were continuing problems for Russia whilst India had remarkably good news – it has now grown at a faster rate than China in two of the last three quarters.
In the UK voters are taking to the polls in one of the most difficult-to-predict General Election for generations – whilst the rest of the world continues with business as usual.