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A basket of European bourses had skidded on the last trading day of a ne'er-do-well year which had been pinned with an unprecedented scale of geopolitical angst alongside frets of an impending recession in the EU and the US, as a barrage of Central Banks appeared to have engaged in a rattling battle against a boisterous inflation-surge.
Nonetheless, London Stock exchange had outperformed its European peers largely due to an ultra-high level of exposure to commodity-linked stocks. The regional pan-European STOXX 600 dipped 1.3 per cent in a thin-volume trading session on Friday, as a temporary rise in pandemic cases in China had stoked frets over global economic growth.
Over the year, the Pan-European STOXX-600 shrugged off 12.9 per cent, the worst performance since 2018. However, as a clutch of major Central Banks’ aggressive policy stances appeared to be playing a pivotal role in setting the tones of investors’ morale throughout the year, a senior analyst at Swissquote Bank said, “This is the beginning of a new era, when central banks will be playing a more subdued role in the markets, with less liquidity available to fix problems – a more than necessary move that came perhaps too late, and too painfully”.
European shares sour, post worst yearly decline since 2018
Citing statistics, on Friday’ European market wind-down, London’s blue-chip FTSE 100 faltered as much as 0.81 per cent to 7,451.74 and French CAC 40 curbed out 1.52 per cent to 6,473,76, while Frankfurt’s DAX 30 tumbled 1.05 per cent to 13,923.59.
Elsewhere in the Europe, Italy’s FTSE MIB muzzled 1.45 per cent to 23,706.96, while Madrid’s benchmark IBEX 35 lost 1.07 per cent to 8,229.10. Over the year, London’s FTSE 100 gained 0.91 per cent, French CAC 40 drowned as much as 9.50 per cent and Frankfurt’s DAX 30 took a tattering header of 12.35 per cent, while Italy’s FTSE MIB had been hit with a hefty whiplash of 13.31 per cent and Madrid’s IBEX 35 lost 5.56 per cent.