STOCK PLAYERS LOST MORE THAN $9 TRILLION THIS YEAR

As U.S. stock markets booked their worst first half of a year since 1970, investors lost more than $9 trillion, Bloomberg has calculated from S&P data tracking small, medium, and large publicly-traded companies.

The NASDAQ had shrunk by nearly a third this year as of 30 June, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 index losing about 20 percent of its value in 2022.

Ten of the S&P’s 11 sectors are down. Consumer discretionary stocks have fared the worst, surrendering 32 percent this year to 30 June.

Only energy stocks have avoided the plunge, adding 30 percent during the year’s first half.

“The market mood is…very negative…dominated by the possibility of recessions in the U.S. and Europe,” Bastien Drut, a strategist at French asset manager CPR, told the Financial Times.

Things are no better overseas.

Europe’s Stoxx 600 index dropped 17 percent from January through June. MSCI’s Asia-Pacific index was 18 percent smaller.

TREND FORECAST: We forecast that today, 5 July, will mark another downward turning point for equities. The worst is yet to come. The higher interest rates rise, the deeper equities will fall and the more money that will be lost among investors big and small.