On the right are the performance numbers of markets, sectors and commodities over the last year and over June.
The ASX 200 was up 8.27% last financial year(not 6.47% as stated in the Saturday email) and the All Ordinaries index including dividends was up 13.73%. That’s a fairly solid market performance for the year. The US markets did somewhat better with the NASDAQ (+ 22.31%) leading the S&P 500 (+12.17%) and the Dow Jones (+13.69%). The Chinese market fell 10.81% although it is down 27% from the January high. The MSCI world index was up 9.02% with the UK +4.43% and Germany -0.16% this financial year.
On the sector front the major disappointment was the bank sector -6.74% which compared with the resources sector +35.86%.
That resources sector performance came from a 61% rise in the oil price, a 15.7% rise in the iron ore price, a 27% rise in the coal price, and 11% rise in the copper price, a 57% rise in the nickel price, a 12% rise in the zinc price and a 5% rise in the aluminium price. Apart from some momentary tariff froth the basic driver was a more robust than expected performance from the Chinese economy. It appears that whilst the Chinese GDP numbers didn’t recover noticeably in 2017 at the headline level, the earlier fudging/smoothing of 2015 and 2015 Chinese GDP numbers hid a recovery in Chinese GDP numbers in the last year.