2009 Stock Market Returns around the world have been anything but steady following the financial collapse of 2008 and a follow-through into 2009 that resulted in complete capitulation the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades. Following the March low, stocks have rocketed back, many of them leveraged off of a US rally with triple digit returns in just 6 months. Earlier in the year, I had updated on 2009 stock market returns by country YTD June showing the US at a mere 3% return vs. several emerging market returns exceeding 50%. Well, rather than doing another YTD with a rather random 9.6 month window to look at, I thought it would be instructive to take a look at 6 month returns of several major bourses – both developed and emerging markets. The 6 month window not only roughly matches the same window as my last update, but also happens to start shortly after the global market resurgence began – so we can all feel bad (myself included) about the triple digit gains we could have been enjoying if we had participated in some of these emerging market ETFs in 2009. You’ll see that even some of the developed market indices had great returns as well. Rather than reporting index returns per se, I used the best proxy ETF I could find for various markets since it’s handy to have this massive ETF list at your disposal for future reference – bookmark this page!
(UPDATE: See Full-Year 2009 Market Returns)
2009 Stock Market Returns: By Highest Return prior 6 Month Period
% Return Ticker Country ETF
159.60% TKF Turkish Investment Fund
144.00% IDX Market Vectors Indonesia Index ETF
122.50% IF Indonesia Fund
113.40% IRL New Ireland Fund
106.50% INP Ipath Msci India Index Etn
104.10% EPI WisdomTree India
93.30% SGF Singapore Fund
92.50% HAO Claymore AlphaShares China Small Cap Index
92.30% IFN India Fund
86.80% EWO Ishares Msci Austria Index Fund
85.20% MXF Mexico Fund
85.00% RSX Market Vectors Russia ETF Trust
84.30% EWS Ishares Msci Singapore Index Fund
75.10% SNF Spain Fund
74.70% EWY Ishares Msci-south Korea Index Fund
74.40% ISL First Israel Fund
72.60% GXG Global X/InterBolsa FTSE Colombia 20 ETF
71.70% TTF Thai Fund
71.30% EWZ Ishares Msci Brazil Index Fund
70.20% EWI Ishares Msci Italy Index Fund
69.40% EWD Ishares Msci Sweden Index Fund
69.00% KEF Korea Equity Fund
64.10% EWN Ishares Msci Netherlands Index Fund
58.60% EWT iShares MSCI Taiwan Index
58.50% EWC Ishares Msci Canada Index Fund
58.20% EZA Ishares Msci South Africa Index Fund
56.30% MAY Malaysia Fund
55.20% EWU Ishares Msci United Kingdom Index Fund
52.80% EWQ Ishares Msci France Index Fund
50.00% EWG Ishares Msci Germany Index Fund
47.80% EWL Ishares Msci Switzerland Index Fund
47.00% CH Chile Fund
44.50% JEQ Japan Equity Fund
39.11% SPY SPDR S&P 500 (ETF)
Analysis: Just as we saw during the 2008 stock market returns list where the US lost the least, during the rebound, the US has gained the least. While investors thought they were “daring” in tipping their toe back in to US stocks during March/April, the real volatility (and in this case, the real gains) have come from international stocks – primarily emerging markets. There were certainly a few surprises in there for me, most notably, that the proverbial BRIC countries didn’t have a terribly strong showing at the top of the list. I was also surprised to see how much stronger some of the old Europe countries performed compared to the US. Where from here? Who knows, but I don’t think any equities portfolio is complete these days without at least some exposure to some of the developed and developing markets here outside the US.
(UPDATE: See Full-Year 2009 Market Returns)
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{ 1 comment }
Good list and a good picture of the global economy… happy days must be here again! 🙂
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