Today's Major Market Move: Hang Seng H Financials Index Gains 19.9% in Past Two Weeks

With all of the bailout related commotion going on over in Europe there's been a lot of equity index volatility over the past two weeks, in both directions. We wanted to see which index has performed the best during that stretch. It turns out that of the equity indexes we track, the Hang Sang H-Financials (Hong Kong based) has gained 19.9%, putting it in the top slot. In fact the top 6 performers are all either Hong Kong or mainland China based.

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Here's a chart of % gains of several Hong Kong based equity indexes since Oct 22. The bulk of the gains occurred two weeks ago when the EFSF expansion/Greek debt write down was first announced. Then the indexes stayed relatively flat as the Greek referendum soap opera played out. I think there is to some extent a 'safe-haven' play here, where relative to Europe, China and Hong Kong are establishing themselves as more secure places to invest.

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Over a longer time frame these same indexes are still down for the year although a lot of damage was repaired in the month of October. The worst performer is the S&P HKex GEM index (down 40%) which is comprised of high growth stocks. High growth sectors around the world have in general underperformed as investors try to escape some of the volatility.

Click here to go to a live version of the chart.