The countries at the nexus of the European debt crisis, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain had the worst-performing stock markets of all developed nations in July, according to figures from Standard & Poor’s.
Spain, which has seen yields on its ten-year government bonds peak at more than 7% in the last month, was the worst-performing developed market. Spanish stocks fell by 20% intra-month, but partly rallied when the European Central Bank said it would support the country, and finished July down 7.08%.
The Greek stock market fell by nearly 6% in the month, compounding the woes for a country that has had more than 80% wiped off the value of its equity index in the last three years.
Italy, which recently admitted its deficit would rise to 2% of GDP, suffered a stock market fall of 5.45% in July, while Ireland had a fall of 3.14% and Portugal 2.7%.
The best-performing stock market was Singapore, with 7.08% growth in July, followed by Australia and Sweden, which each exceeded 6%.
Developed markets on average gained 1.06% in July, outpacing the emerging nations, which achieved average growth of 0.89%.
©2012 funds europe
