At the mid-August halfway point it is la Zurich Stock Exchange the best among the main European stock lists, even if in absolute terms the one that has achieved the greatest increase since the beginning of the year is the small and very volatile Athens Stock Exchange (+32,30%)dominated mainly by banks.
When the going gets tough and he faces the markets the shadow of the recession – as revealed by the inversion of the yield curve of American bonds which for a few days have become higher for short-term bonds than for ten-year bonds – it's the defensive bags that win. And so it is happening again this year: the Zurich Stock Exchange – with titles of the caliber of Nestle, Novartis, Ubs, Credit Suisse, Zurich and others – has gradually overtaken the stock lists of Paris, Frankfurt, London and Milan, and with an increase of 14,2% since the beginning of 2019, took the lead.
Behind Zurich follow the Stock Exchange Paris (+12,24%), that of Amsterdam (+10,84%), that of Milano (+9,26%), which has lost a lot of ground for the country's political uncertainty but which still surpasses the Stock Exchange Frankfurt (+8,84%), tormented by the industrial crisis and by the unusual shadows of recession, and naturally that of London (+6,15%), which pays for the risk of hard Brexit proposed by the new premier Boris Johnson.
Despite the slumps of the last few days, the Nasdaq, with an increase of 18,1% from the beginning of the year to August XNUMX, however, remains the strongest index in the world, at least among the main exchanges.
Changing of the guard instead in South America, where the collapse of the Stock Exchange and of the currency has taken away the primacy and plunged the Stock Exchange into negative territory Buenos Aires (-3,93%), while it is the Brazilian Bovespa (+14,56%) conquered the continental record after years of deep disappointments.
But we are only in August and the uncertainties weighing on the markets (recession, tariffs, Brexit and others) are many and can easily revolutionize the ranking of stock exchanges, never as volatile as this year.
