Fortunately of days like this on the Stock Exchange are few, very few. In Piazza Affari losses such as those recorded in this one black Monday that couldn't be blacker they only met in moments that marked national and global history negatively: Brexit, Lehman Brothers, 11/XNUMX, the debt crisis. And from today also there'Coronavirus emergency.
MARCH 9: THE STOCK MARKET COLLAPSES BY 11%
The Ftse Mib closed trading with a drop of 11,17% to 18.475 basis points, black jersey at world level: on 9 March 2020 he officially enters the history of the list as second worst crash ever. Piazza Affari did worse than this only on 24 June 2016, when the main list was hit, together with all the other European stock exchanges, by the panic selling caused by the victory of the Leavenworth in the Brexit referendum held the day before. At the time, the drop was 12,48% with 2 basis points gone up in smoke.
READ MORE: Piazza Affari: the worst collapses in the history of the Ftse Mib
This time at the root of the perfect storm unleashed on the Milan Stock Exchange and, to a lesser extent, on the other lists are the combination of two killer factors that triggered panic selling:
- The increase in infections from Covid-19 in Italy and in Europe which prompted the Government to extend the red zone to the whole of Lombardy and to 14 other provinces of Northern Italy and to impose heavy restrictions on the rest of the country to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus;
- The oil war between Saudi Arabia and Russia which could have very harsh political and economic consequences for everyone.
THE CHRONICLE OF THE DAY
Already from the pre-opening phase what would happen during the session became clear to everyone. Milan struggled to open, while none of the blue chips could make money by excess down. The red has widened more and more during the day, with the Ftse Mib which came to lose 11,6% and then closed at -11,17%. A session that takes Piazza Affari back over a year, canceling the +28,3% achieved in 2019: not surprisingly, to find a level similar to today's one you have to go back to 3 January 2019, when the price list had reached a minimum of 18.397 points.
Panic selling has prompted some politicians to even ask for the temporary closure of Piazza Affari receiving a peremptory No from Consob, according to which for the moment there is no evidence "that the performance of the Italian Stock Exchange reflects speculative attacks, unless one wants to attribute to this term the reaction of operators to the uncertainties about the future generated by the effects of the coronavirus on the economy”.
OTHER RECOR. REDUCTIONSD
As mentioned, the performance of 9 March is in second place among the worst in history (after that of 24 June 2016), overcoming the collapse achieved on 6 October 2008 (-8,24%) following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Fourth place for the session of 11 September 2001, when on the day of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Milan closed down by -7,79%.
Among the other famous thuds we note the -7,14% recorded on 10 October 2008 (full Lehman crisis), and the -6,8% recorded on 1 November 2011, a period in which Italy was hit by the sovereign debt crisis which led to the resignation of the then prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
