5 Key Takeaways for Global Markets in 2020
Despite Covid-19 turmoil, investors received a great deal of what they could wish for, especially in terms of handsome returns with notably low volatility.
He had a good year.
Photographer: Daniel Roland/AFP/Getty Images
A year like no other for most of us around the world will be remembered in the U.S. and international financial markets for five remarkable features:
Apart from a few weeks culminating in the 2020 market lows of March 23, stocks managed to shrug off what has been a drastic collapse in global economic activity with significant immediate and longer-term consequences. This incredible decoupling has shown no sign of slowing even as markets trade at historically elevated valuation levels. If anything, an already exceptional disconnect has become larger at the end of the year. Stocks have established one record after another while economies have had to deal with another wave of Covid-19 hospitalizations and deaths that has surprised most in terms of intensity and speed of spread while complicating the journey to vaccine-induced herd immunity.