“We Are Only At The Beginning”: Why SocGen Expects A 50% Drop
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Wed, 01/02/2019
As we discussed in our year-end review, despite all the complaints and panicked rhetoric, it wasn’t so much 2018 that was painfully volatile year – it is 2017 that was an unprecedented case study in market calm; a year when the MSCI World index experienced just three days of market moves of 1% or more in either direction.
And, as SocGen’s Andrew Lapthorne writes this morning, “it was this unusually low volatility in 2017 that helped contribute to the market difficulties in 2018” as traders tried – and failed – to shift from a placid market to one that increasingly reflected the risks of the day.
The SocGen strategist then lays out some facts about market performance last year, noting that overall the MSCI World finished the year down 10.4% with a negative total return of 8.2%, beginning its slide almost at the beginning of the year, with Emerging Markets fell 16.6% with a total return of -14.2%, with most equity markets losing similar amounts. The exception, according to Lapthorne was the US, “which ended the year in dramatic fashion”, with the S&P 500 having its worst December (-9.2%) since its inception in 1957 despite a massive 5% daily surge on the 26th December. To be sure, while the S&P finished the year down just 6.2% and the Nasdaq ended down just 3.9%, it could have been far worse.
Meanwhile, as we showed yesterday, outside the US it was mostly a very ugly year, with double-digit losses were common and several indices including Germany and Japan are in bear market territory (the two outliers were, curiously, the UAE and Saudi Arabia).
The Rest…HERE
