by John Lounsbury
Econintersect has, in the past, followed 30 global stock market indexes. In view of the recent market turmoil it seemed worthwhile to review just what has happened to these indexes. Not surprisingly, all 30 are down from their 52-week highs, which occurred as far back as November and as recently as August 1. We will use the definitions that (1) a decline less than 10% is a “pullback”, a decline of 10% but less than 20% is a “correction” and a decline of 20% or more is a bear market. Note: this author has also used the alternative definitions of “pullback” and “correction” interchangeably, “secondary bear market” rather than correction and “primary bear market” for declines of 20% or more.Exactly half of the indexes have entered primary bear market territory. Thirteen are in secondary bear markets and the two strongest have experienced pullbacks, or corrections of less than 10%. The details are shown in the table below:
Whether the bottom for each of these markets is in or not is, of course, yet to be seen. If there are further lows in the coming weeks, we will revisit this data.