For the latest ETF industry news, please refer to our “Asia ETF Roundup (Industry) – March 2020”.
Major Markets Performance
On 12 March, the World Health Organization announced the COVID-19 outbreak had officially become a pandemic. Large portions of the global economy have gone into lockdown. Markets have been roiled. The S&P 500 ended the month with a loss of 12.5%. Key Asian markets also suffered double digit losses (Korea’s KOSPI -11.7%, Singapore’s STI -17.6%). China’s equity markets saw narrower losses at around 5-7% (HSCEI -6.9%; CSI 300 -6.4%; Shanghai Composite -4.5%). Emerging markets were particularly hard hit. Many tanked 20-40% (proxied by the respective MSCI country indices in USD terms), putting the year-to-date declines in some of the markets at 30-50%.
