Today's M^3 - Finland Equity Market Down 13% in Past 30 Days

Finland's stock market is the focus of today's Major Market Move post. It's been one of the worst performers on the planet so far this year and has had a particularly rough past 4 weeks, dropping 13%. The only two markets that have fared worse are the Shanghai B Share index (which was discussed here) and the Greek market, which has dropped for reasons that any sentient being on the planet should be aware of by now.


The Helsinki Index has plummeted through the lows of the year which you can witness here:


With their own economy struggling, it's not surprising that Finland has been one of the biggest opponents of the European bailouts. From the New York Times back on April 18th:

That day came on Sunday, when Finnish voters awarded 19 percent of their ballots to the nationalist and populist True Finn Party, which is highly skeptical of bailouts for countries like Greece, Ireland and, most pertinently, Portugal. The results made the True Finns the odds-on favorites to become coalition partners in a future government.

Nokia's recent troubles are having an impact as well, both directly and indirectly. According to wikipedia, Nokia accounted for 33% of the market cap of the Helsinki Stock Exchange (of course that percentage is quite a bit lower today). Here's more:

Nokia plays a very large role in the economy of Finland; it is by far the largest Finnish company, accounting for about a third of the market capitalization of the Helsinki Stock Exchange (OMX Helsinki) as of 2007, a unique situation for an industrialized country.[12] It is an important employer in Finland and several small companies have grown into large ones as its partners and subcontractors.[13] Nokia increased Finland's GDP by more than 1.5% in 1999 alone. In 2004 Nokia's share of the Finnish GDP was 3.5% and accounted for almost a quarter of Finland's exports in 2003.[14]

(Click on the images for a larger view.
Click here for the current performance of global equity indexes.
Click here for the current chart of the OMX Helsinki Index.)