October General Markets Comments
«Fade Out Lines» – The Avener Rework, 2014
Charts lines from the 12 to 18 post-covid months are gradually fading out, and it seems markets are coming back to earth after an incredible run on speculative and/or expensive assets from March 2020 to November 2021. These roller coaster capital markets make investors feel dizzy, at least a smidgen. Pirouetting from the downside to the upside, markets logically give rise to howls calling for a looming disaster, or, conversely, for the beginning of a new bull phase.
Whatever the trigger, excesses always end up badly; but as they deflate, opportunities arise, and it seems that October 2022 was a month of opportunities. At a time of crucial reports from the IT and Communication Services behemoths, one could have expected that the latter would dictate the overall market mood; in fact, they did not. Markets can do anything, and they proved again how tough it is to assess their reactions. Reports from the Big Boys were mostly disappointing, but this did not prevent Global Equities from posting spectacular returns, as shown by the +7.11% performance of the MSCI World in October.
Not only did the MSCI World perform well, but all other major indices also rose significantly (S&P 500 +7.99%, MSCI Europe +6.15%, Topix +5.09%, Nasdaq +3.96%), barring the MSCI Emerging Markets, which abandoned 3.15%, penalized by the Chinese market essentially (-7.99%).
With interest rates rising again (+22 bps and +3 bps for the US and the German 10 year respectively), Value fared much better than Growth (+9.58% for Global Value versus +4.56% for Global Growth), and Gold lost ground again (-1.63%); the shiny stuff, very symbolically, now lags the Dow Jones Industrial year to date (-10.70% vs -9.9%), quite a surprise in a year marked by rising inflation and war. Credit had a very good month, the Itraxx Crossover gained 3.65%, and Oil finally broke a 4-month losing streak by adding 8.9%.
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