2012 - Against the odds, a bullish Year For Equities

After a cracking start to 2012, equity markets suddenly turned negative in late March and experienced declines amounting to 20% from their year highs in certain cases. Rhetoric coming from European leaders could no longer sustain the anxiety investors were perspiring, and with a lack of solid solutions to put an end to the sovereign bubble, investors abandoned the stock market to look elsewhere for safety.

Just when everyone was thinking that the worst of the crisis was already behind us, a new wave of concern laid the markets low and caught many off guard. In the end, ECB head “Super” Mario Draghi started a high stakes game bluff that, luckily for him, he emerged the winner in late Summer when he was successful in reflating equities.

The second quarter of 2012 in particular was a really tough one, with many European markets dropping around 7% and the Nikkei more than 10%.  It seemed that everything was pointing to yet another ugly August like the one in 2011 but Draghi’s strong words that he would “do whatever it takes to save the Euro and keep it alive” turned the ship around. With such unexpectedly strong wording, investors bet heavily that the ECB would step in and engage in some kind of monetary easing as the FED is doing in the U.S. with the FED.

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