박재훈투영인
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5 months ago
Taking Stock of the Numbers That Shaped Markets in 2001(From the Wall Street Journal Europe) ( Jan. 4, 2002)
Numbers make the markets go 'round. So any conversation about equities is usually peppered with references to the highs, the lows and the ratios that try to make sense of it all.As markets enter a new trading year, here are data points for Europe and the U.S. that will help investors get through any cocktail conversation that revolves around investing and what happened in 2001.Europe17The Dow Jones Stoxx Index of 600 European blue chips fell 17% in 2001, its worst year since 1990. The index ended the year at 298.73, a long way from 359.79 at the start of 2001.The index was rarely in the black and hit its closing high of 362.47 on Jan. 29. The closing low, 235.90, came at the end of a manic week following the resumption of trading in New York Sept. 17. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. shut down the New York Stock Exchange for four days.The bright spot: Those who invested the first day trading resumed earned 26.6% through the end of the year.11Germany's Neuer Markt, the darling of European indexes in 2000, wasn't so cool only a year later. The exchange for small-company stocks couldn't even average one initial public offering per month -compared with one every other working day in 2000, when 133 companies went public. The last of the year's 11 IPOs came July 24, when init innovation in traffic systems AG raised 59.8 million euros ($54 million).It was a dud year all around for IPOs. The total number of offerings in Europe, the Middle East and Africa collapsed 71% to 183 from 639 a year earlier, according to investment-banking research firm Dealogic CommScan.1,442,000,000That is the value in pounds of shares outstanding in Railtrack PLC, the formerly state-owned railway-network operator that the Labor government put in administration Oct. 8. Its shares haven't traded since.Angry shareholders have banded into a handful of groups and continue to threaten lawsuits in an effort to recover their money.FourUnlike the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank was as slow as molasses in cutting interest rates in 2001. Its 18 members agreed to do so just four times. The repo rate ended the year at 3.25%, down from 4.5% at the start of the year.83.48The euro hit its low against the dollar July 6 when it was valued at just 83.48 U.S. cents. Euro bashers can note with glee that it represented an 11.4% drop in purchasing power from the start of the year, when it was valued at 94.24 cents.It has since made up half those losses; it ended the year at 89.15 cents.14,889,900,000While the ECB did little on the interest-rate front, it was busy overseeing the introduction of euro notes and coins. The 12 national central banks cranked out 14.89 billion banknotes -- some of which they will keep for themselves for emergencies. Each country also minted a total of 51,611,000,000 coins. Taken together, that is about 636 billion euros in cash making its way into the hands of 306 million Europeans.674,157,863While most exchanges across Europe reported sizable drops in trading volume, markets listing futures and options contracts were busier than ever. Eurex, the Swiss-German derivatives exchange, retained its title as the world's largest exchange with a 48% jump in the number of contracts traded, to 674,157,863.The U.S.FourWall Street's most harrowing stretch was four days when nothing traded at all.The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks transformed downtown Manhattan into a disaster zone and prompted a four-day halt in U.S. stock trading, the longest such stoppage since the Great Depression. Fearful of a market collapse when trading resumed, Wall Street rushed to set aside many longstanding rules and rivalries -- with mixed success. For example, federal regulators took the unusual step of relaxing nearly 20-year-old restrictions on when and how corporations can repurchase their own stock. The move unleashed share-repurchase announcements from hundreds of companies, but it didn't stop the Dow industrials from staging the biggest one-day point drop ever when trading picked up on Sept. 17.307,509,225,893The New York Stock Exchange certainly had lots of reasons to feel magnanimous.More than a quarter-trillion of them. Despite the historic trading halt in September, not to mention a war and a recession, a record 307.51 billion shares changed hands on the Big Board in 2001. That is well above 2000's total volume of 262.5 billion, itself a record high at the time. Way back in 1991, when a different Bush was waging a different war and we stood at the eve of a different recession, total trading volume on the NYSE was a mere 45.3 billion shares.690While the Big Board boomed, the Nasdaq withered. Hard hit by the decline in stock prices and the dearth of initial public offerings, the Nasdaq Stock Market has lost 690 listed companies since the end of 2000, according to data from the Nasdaq Web site. As of mid-December, the Nasdaq reported having 4,044 stocks listed on its Nasdaq National Market and the Nasdaq SmallCap Market, putting it on track to finish the year with its leanest roster since 1983.Although its cachet soared along with the 1990s tech boom, Nasdaq's ranks have been falling since 1997. That is when Nasdaq tightened its listing requirements to exclude any stock that trades below $1 (1.11 euros) for more than 30 days.92Staging an IPO, a glamour event in 1999, became an arduous challenge in 2001.Only 92 companies managed to reach the public markets, compared with 396 in 2000, according to Dealogic. For most of 2001, tight-fisted institutional investors balked at buying new issues, prompting more than 160 companies to scrap their previously filed IPO applications altogether. But business picked up in the fourth quarter with 31 IPOs, or more than a third of the year's total.3,287.71It is little wonder investors lost their stomach for IPOs, with the Dow industrials lurching 3,287.71 points from peak to trough during the year. A particularly unlucky soul who bought a basket of Dow stocks at the May 21 peak and sold at the Sept. 21 nadir would have seen his or her holdings shrink 29%. (Since the lows in September, however, the major stocks indexes have surged on hopes of an economic recovery.)6,447,893,636Not everyone is toasting the year-end rally, however. Judging from levels of short interest, or the number of open bets that stocks will fall, the recent run-up has brought out the bears as well. As of the last count in mid-December, short interest on NYSE-listed stocks rose 2.8% to more than 6.4 billion shares, notching its 10th monthly record in a row. (Some strategists consider increasing short interest to be a positive indicator, because it represents an obligation to buy stocks later on.)54It required 54 pages to list all the unsecured creditors of Enron and its subsidiaries. That is a list to make a short-seller grin.11Enron's stock wasn't the only thing that cratered in 2001: The federal funds interest rate got sliced 11 times, bringing it to levels not seen since the Berlin Wall was in its glory. Hoping in vain to ward off a recession, the Federal Reserve's policy makers chopped interest-rate targets throughout the year, most recently at their Dec. 11 meeting. But the power of the Fed to stimulate the economy was hampered by a bond market that stubbornly refused to let long-term interest rates fall as fast as the Fed committee might have wished.620So where will stocks be this time next year? Pick a number -- the odds are pretty good that you will land somewhere within the gaping 620-point window of forecasts for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index.Major stock strategists predict that the S&P could settle anywhere from 950 to 1570 at the end of 2002, reflecting vastly different outlooks on the prospects for a quick rebound in the economy and in corporate profits. From its current level of 1148.08, an S&P of 950 would require a drop of 17%. To reach a target of 1570, the S&P would have to rise by 37%.ZeroReality check: Despite their painstaking prognostications, not one of these strategists correctly predicted the severity of the S&P 500's decline in 2001.Year-end forecasts had ranged from 1225 to 1715, all above the S&P's closing price for year-end 2001 of 1148.08.
