The Markets in the last week of the year

The world's stock markets are entering the last week of what has been a 'brutal' year with record losses.
The Dow Jones industrial average (DJIA) has tumbled 36% and is on track to suffer its worst annual decline since 1931. The Nasdaq is off 42.5% and the S&P 500 is down 40.5%.
After the credit crunch of the beginning of this year the outlook for the world economy deteriorated surprisingly rapidly. Optimists still expect a return to growth in the second half of 2009. Pessimists expect this to happen not before the 3rd quarter of 2010.
Authorities and governments have a tendency to overestimate their capacities and usually simply look at the statistics (and not behind the figures) to stimulate the economy. We lean towards the pessimistic side until somewhat more rational and higher intelligence minds emerge. What has gone wrong in the last 25 (or more) years cannot be fixed in a couple of months or quarters.

Trading in the last week of this volatile year is low volume, a lot of traders are on vacation till the end of next week, trading is done for the books and year-end tax purposes. Companies and Governments wait with bad news till after the holidays.

In 2008 we saw a tremendous increase of the Oil Price and an almost equally fast decrease. The decrease is due to lower demand, less economic activity, the outlook and forecasts of the world economy. But already dissident voices within OPEC and pressures from outside OPEC ask for more production cuts to raise the crude oil price again.

The markets in Asia were slightly up this morning. (10.30 CET)
Europe opened with gains between 1% and 2.2%, on very low volume.
U.S. Markets, pre market indicators point to a moderately higher opening.

The Euro (€) is celebrating its 10th birthday this week.