Today marks 14 years since Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. The malpractice with subprime mortgages (also known as junk or high risk) of what was then the fourth largest investment bank in the United States ended up transforming into a global financial crisis that hit the markets with unprecedented harshness. Now, almost a decade and a half later, the complicated macroeconomic situation does not depend on the bankruptcy of one of the most important banking entities in the world, but fears of a financial collapse similar to the one suffered in 2008 fly over a large part of the economies of the balloon.
Uncontrolled inflation, high energy prices and the war in Ukraine, among other setbacks in the current year, are currently opening the debate among experts about the possibility of suffering a stock market crash similar to the Lehman crisis. However, according to a survey conducted by elEconomista.es among 24 wealth advisory and asset management firms, there is still hope.
. In addition, regarding whether or not it is time to be in the market due to the risk of large stock market drops, those surveyed consider that, depending on the profile of each investor, it may be a good time to add risk to portfolios and benefit from low equity entry prices.
In this sense, and with an optimistic vision, Diego Fernández Elices, general director of investments at A&G, explains that, without any relevant imbalance in the economy, “there is not the slightest indication that we can see falls like those seen in the crisis of Lehman, beyond the fact that human beings always tend to think that each crisis will be the same as one of the previous two”, but now “the financial sector is healthy, the corporate sector does not have debt levels that are a problem and the sector property does not accumulate the excesses it had in that crisis”, he concludes.
However, while most experts do not see a new Lehman at the current juncture, they do point to further corrections in the coming weeks. A fact that has already been experienced in days like last Tuesday, where and with the total of its values in negative territory; something that had not happened since the Covidcrash and that did not happen in the Lehman crisis either.
The stock market comeback
14 years later, all the main indices on this and the other side of the Atlantic, except for the Ibex 35 and the Milan Stock Exchange, have managed to erase losses and exceed pre-2008 levels.
The S&P 500, specifically, has advanced more than 215% since then, which is twice what the German Dax has rebounded since the aforementioned financial crash, which is the European index that has advanced the most since then, with a rise of more than 100%.
The Nasdaq 100, for its part, is the index that bounces the most in the same interval thanks to the very nature of the companies that make it up and its rise in recent years: technology. Thus, the technological index par excellence has recorded a rise of more than 580% since then. It should be remembered that the American market was the first to recover from the claws of the health crisis and marked one of the most surprising scenarios of 2020, with the two main indices closing the year with gains of over 15%.
Fixed income sets a new milestone and not precisely because it is positive
After these, and continuing with the Old Continent, the Stoxx 600 is the next largest stock market reference, with a rise of 50% since then. It is followed by the French Cac, with more than 43%, and the British Ftse 100, with 36%.
The main Spanish reference, however, cannot boast of the same figures, since it is still 29% below the levels it was around before mid-September 2008, when it reached around 11,000 points. However, although the calculation of the index has not succeeded in forgetting these losses, there are values that have. Specifically, a dozen Ibex companies are currently reaching higher levels than they were then, with Rovi at the head of this comeback, with a rise in its price of 408%. Solaria, Fluidra, Inditex and Ferrovial are next, as their stocks have since risen 407%, 305%, 302% and 230%, respectively.
As for fixed income, the Bloomberg world debt index has already lost up to double in the last year, from maximums to minimums, of what was left in the middle of the Lehman crisis, since then it yielded around 9%, compared to the current 19%.
Facebook Comments
Disqus