Equities taking a hit right now. Anyone know why?

Thrugelmir

BrockStoker wrote: »

Everything seems to be down over the last few days. FTSE 100 has taken a bit of a nose dive. Anyone know what has prompted this?

To put matters in perspective. Since 1900 around 86% of the return in the market has been generated by dividend income.

No_Santander

not sure I call it nose dive today. 2 days ago, oil firm too massive hit and that was a drop.

still, weekly move < 5%. for investment purpose, not changing anything.

Kendall80

Asian rate cuts should help reverse the small downturn/correction. There is also euro QE and our improved trade deficit figure on the plus side.


The BoE is also raising talk of rates holding for longer or even possibly being cut further!


These should be good for equities in general. However, watch out for any US FED rate hike news. Any hint even in the language they use could cause a correction.

Thrugelmir

Standard Chartered, BHP Bilton and Direct Line amongst others went ex div today.

BrockStoker

No_Santander wrote: »

not sure I call it nose dive today. 2 days ago, oil firm too massive hit and that was a drop.

I think you nailed it there. The drop started a couple of days back, and I should have been more clear about it. If anything it looks like everything is rebounding "right now".

I find it fascinating that one relatively "small fish" going down can create so wide reaching ripples in the markets/sectors all over the world.

I also found it curious that one of the least affected sectors (at least in my portfolio holdings) was UK micro-caps, which in my past experience had been more affected by "blips" in the markets, but it seems this is because it was a different kind of "blip" to what I've seen before.

The clue should have been seeing that the natural resources funds I've been monitoring took the biggest hit (around 6%)!

Ryan_Futuristics

These tiny corrections are mostly just 'profit-taking' - but Greece is weighing heavy on people's minds (it's like if we can put off debt default thoughts for another month, markets can gain ... But then we remember the problem's still there) ... In the short-term, markets are governed mostly by momentum - prices climb up together, then people take their profits at the peak, and that forces them to drop back down

You get momentum behaviour throughout the day - with people who make 5,000 trades a day - and you get momentum that's measured in months and years

The UK markets are actually quite skittish, and not very momentum-driven - although they roughly track the US ... Whereas the S&P 500 is extremely momentum-driven, and incredibly easy to time with a 12-month moving average ... It's perhaps simply a case that there are many more people investing directly in the US, they're more efficient, and it smooths a lot of the chaos out, revealing the basic market behaviours of greed and fear more clearly

weenie15

TrustyOven wrote: »

Just seen this in my RSS reader too...

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Thanks for linking my blog as I suddenly saw a lot of new traffic!

The 'expert' hedges his bets and gives a lot of different scenarios that could cause a global crash, any of which could happen so he can say "I told you so!"

atush

I also think the drop the other day was some taking profits after recent highs.

No_Santander

UKX is top ish.... a few sectors look weak. Oil, Mining, banking, retail.

Election in May, for Delta One guys, better stay put for now I think

JohnRo

UK100 still some way from historic highs, using ONS CPI data to Jan 15