Twenty five trillion dollars was wiped off global stock markets last year, according to the World Federation of Exchanges’ (WFE) FY 2022 Market Highlights report.
The global industry group for exchanges and central clearing counterparties, revealed that  in percentage terms, stock markets slid by 20% in market capitalisation and 10% in value traded, reversing the positive trend of the two previous years.
The report attributed the slump to the fallout from the pandemic as well as the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. This triggered soaring energy prices,especially in Europe and many countries were affected by supply bottlenecks.
Markets were also impacted by China’s renewed Covid lockdown, which further strained the global supply chain, increasing prices of imported goods.
The result was investors steered cleared of equities as inflation and interest rates climbed to levels not seen for 30 to 40 years across many countries.
“We witnessed a perfect storm in 2022 of so many negative pressures culminating to bring immense pressure on global stock markets, as our report highlights,’’ says Nandini Sukumar, CEO of the WFE.
Breaking down the figures, the report said that while trading value fell about 10% globally in 2022, with trading value declining in every region, global volumes increased about 5%, with every region contributing to this result.
It noted that last year recorded the highest global volumes in the last six years at 48.32 billion trades as well as the most elevated regional volumes during the same period.
This translated into 13.44 billion trades for the Americas, 31.13 billion for the Asia Pacific region and 3.74 billion for Europe Middle East and Africa.
The report also showed that the number of initial public offerings and the capital raised through IPOs declined sharply -50% and -65%, respectively, compared to 2021 activity.
In addition, it said that the number of listed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) rose only 5% when compared to 2021, but their value traded jumped considerably at 32.2%, with every region reporting increases.
©Markets Media Europe 2023
