We comment on 12 of the world’s major stock markets in this Quarterly Report and the majority of them made an excellent start to the year. In January, 11 of them made gains – in some cases, spectacular gains which investors would have seen as a respectable return over 12 months, never mind one.
In January, there was good news on growth in China and the World Bank issued a bullish forecast as it looked ahead to 2018. Reporting that global economic growth had been stronger than expected in 2017, the Bank forecast growth of 3.1% for the coming year. The Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, said, “The broad-based recovery in global growth is encouraging.”
Let’s take a look at the detail…