5 days were enough to bring the Milan Stock Exchange from the stars to the underworld. In what has now been renamed as "the week of the coronavirus" Piazza Affari recorded a plunge of 11,25%, officially entering the correction phase and wiping out this year's gains altogether. A trend that was unthinkable until a few weeks ago, when the Ftse Mib was traveling with the wind in its sails reaching – on February 19 – reaching 25.477 basis points, a level that had not been seen in Milan since 2008, before the famous collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the great international economic crisis.
CORONAVIRUS: THE WEEK ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE
Sales started on Monday 24 February. Two days earlier a 38-year-old from Codogno had been found positive for covid-19, triggering in Italy, and consequently throughout Europe, the coronavirus emergency.
Panic has moved from the streets to the markets, with the stock exchanges sinking after the weekend break. The weekly budget of the Ftse Mib looks like a war bulletin: Monday -5,4%, Tuesday -1,44%. On Wednesday, a small attempt at a rebound (+1,44%) had deluded companies and investors, but hope was immediately dashed by the following session, which ended with a decline of 2,66%. Even worse on Friday, the second worst day of the week, which ended with a fall of 3,58%. The weekly balance is negative by over 11 percentage points. Not only that, the collapse of the last few days has transformed the gains made since January into losses, with the Ftse Mib which has lost 6,4% since the beginning of the year.
THE RANKING OF THE WORST TITLES
The balance sheet of the individual securities listed on the Ftse Mib is also very heavy. All blue chips are in red regardless of the sector they belong to: Hi-tech, industry, banks, asset management. There isn't a company that has managed to save itself from panic selling. Just think that the best stock of the week is CNH Industrial which recorded a loss of 4,88%.
The ranking of the worst stocks of the Ftse Mib is led by Bpm bank, sideways involved in banking risk, which in 5 sessions saw 17,78% of its value go up in smoke. In free fall too Juventus, which marks -15,28%. It is not only the coronavirus emergency that affects the performance of Juventus shares, but also the defeat remedied with Lyon in the Champions League and doubts about the accounts for the first half of 2019/2020, archived with a loss of over 50 million.
Worse than the black and whites do Leonardo (-16,48%), Azimuth (-15,74%), Unipol (-15,66) and A2a (-15,4%), the latter protagonist of a sudden turnaround at the top. It follows closely Italian post (-15,21%). The top ten worst stocks close with Stm (-15%), Mediobanca (-13,7) and Tenaris (-13,47%).
