PrefBlog

Well, that’s the end of the first half!

U.S. and Canadian stocks on Thursday closed out their worst quarter since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with another session of broad losses and growing unease among investors that the bloodletting in markets won’t let up any time soon.

The world’s most closely followed benchmark stock index, the S&P 500, saw the steepest percentage decline in the first half of a year since 1970.

The Canadian stock market has fared better, but its outperformance has been eroding in recent weeks amid growing bets that a rush by central bankers to hike interest rates to combat skyrocketing inflation will push economies into recession. Such a scenario paints an unsupportive picture for the S&P/TSX Composite Index, due to its heavy weighting of economically sensitive sectors such as energy, metals and financials.

In total, more than US$13-trillion has been erased from global stocks in a year that has also seen steep losses in bond markets and a breathtaking drop in cryptocurrencies, once thought to be a compelling way to diversify away from larger asset classes.

But we’ll end things on a hopeful note:

An international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of Manchester, has developed a fast and economical method of converting methane, or natural gas, into liquid methanol at ambient temperature and pressure. The method takes place under continuous flow over a photo-catalytic material using visible light to drive the conversion.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 30th, 2022 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.