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And The Loser Is?

The world’s worst performing major stock market in 2019, barring any big upset in the next couple of days, will have been Hong Kong.

As of last Friday here are the world’s largest market performances for 2019 [Indices exclude dividends in all cases]:

#1 S+P-500 +29%

#2 Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite +21%

#3 Nikkei-225 + 19%

#4 FTSE-100 +14%

#5 Hang Seng China Enterprises Index* +11%

[*The Hang Seng Index did even worse with a gain of only 9%]

I flagged an inevitable article on its way about what a great year Hong Kong will have had for IPOs in an earlier post last week at Hong Kong IPOs; Fool’s Paradise and today the South China Morning Post duly obliged with this Hong Kong beats Nasdaq (and followed it up in the print edition, A3, today).

The point is worth laboring. The more expensive paper that gets dumped on unsophisticated investors the less likely it is that a stock market, in aggregate, will perform.

So, hooray for Hong Kong, the world’s biggest IPO-lister in 2019; and the world’s worst performing major stock market. Coincidence? Not really.

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