Pop Quiz: Which Share Market is Which?
The following percentage movements relate to the performance of the share market’s of three countries for 2011.
- One share market went up by 5.5 precent for the year.
- One share market went down by 35 percent for the year.
- The final share market went down by 14.5 percent for the year.
Now I will tell you that the three share markets are the Australian All Ordinaries index, another is the American Dow Jones index, and the third one is the Chinese Shenzhen index.
Your job is to match the three market indexes up with the corresponding performance for 2011.
Thinking maybe it was the American Dow that lost 35 percent? Everyone knows the American economy is not travelling the best. Manufacturing is down. House prices fell about 15 percent for the year. ‘Real’ unemployment is around 15 percent (adjusted unemployment is at about 9.5 percent).
Thinking maybe it was the Australia All Ordinaries that went up by 5.5 percent? After all, the government has not stopped telling us how well our economy is going for the last 18 months—every chance they get.
So that would mean the Chinese market fell by 14.5 percent, which seems a bit odd because China is renowned as the worlds economic “engine room”.
Well, if you went with that you would not have got a single guess right.
It was the American Dow that went up 5.5 percent.
The Australian All Ordinaries lost 14.5 percent over the year.
And, believe it or not, the Chinese markets fell a whopping 35 percent in 2011!
So much for the “engine room” of the world’s economy.
