The June quarter has made a complete mess of market returns here and offshore.
The three months ended yesterday saw the local market down almost 12%, or $175 billion in market capitalisation.
Wall Street fell overnight, with the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq all at new 2010 lows.
The Dow was down more than 10% (a correction, again) for the quarter, the S&P and Nasdaq were both down around 12%.
In Australia the market was up over 22% at the end of December, 2009.
By the close of the 2010 financial year yesterday it was still in the black, but the gains were 8% for the ASX 200 and 9.5% for the All Ordinaries.
Yesterday the ASX200 share index ended down for a seventh day in a row, losing 44.2 points, or 1%, to 4301.5
The All Ordinaries was off 45.8 points, or 1%, to 4324.8 points.
Super funds look like they will lose heavily for the quarter.
The median return for last financial year is forecast to be around 9.6%, down sharply from the 15% predicted in April.
Both market indexes were earlier down more than 2% yesterday, but some late bargain hunting and perhaps some window dressing halved the fall.
For the quarter, both the ASX200 and the All Ordinaries had their worst quarterly result since the final three months of 2008 when the global financial crisis was at its fiercest.
Asian stocks fell around 10% in the past three months which is the worst quarterly performance since last three months of 2008, when Asian shares dropped 23% in the wake of the Lehman collapse.
In Tokyo the Nikkei lost 2% to end at 9382.6: that’s a seven month low as doubts about the recovery in Japan and China dominated. The index fell a massive 15% in the quarter.
Asian markets were down almost 10% for the three months, driven by those big falls in China, Japan and Australia.,
In Europe Spain’s market was down more than 22% on the worries about its banks.
Oil prices lost almost 10% from the end of March, the first quarterly drop since the October-December period in 2008.
But that didn’t quite tell the story: in early May US oil futures prices hit a 19-month high above $US87 a barrel, they bottomed under $US68 a barrel a month later.
Gold prices hit a record in the quarter of $US1,258.20 an ounce (the June 8 close).
They rose around 12% for the quarter, silver is up some 6% for the quarter.
For June, gold gained 2.5%, after rising 3% in May and 6% in April.
But copper shed around 10% in June quarter to finish around $US2.91 a pound in New York, to be down around 17%.
Zinc’s lost around 25%, nickel fell 23%, lead 19% and aluminum 16%.
Oil prices fell 4.3% in the half, thanks to the sharp fall in the quarter.
There Aussie dollar fell 6.8% against the greenback and was down just over 6% on a trade weighted index.
The Swiss franc starred with a 12% rise against the euro and 4% against the US dollar.
All these falls were driven by fears about the strength of the Chinese economy and by concerns that the US and European economies might slow to a new dip into the red later this year.
And though the number of new floats rose in 2009-10, that disguised a second half fade.
The Deloitte Corporate Finance IPO Survey said there were 67 IPOs in the year to June 30, 2010, compared to 28 in the prior year, thanks to the solid first half performance.
The value of funds raised via IPOs in the 2010 financial year rose from $1.1 billion to $4 billion, with more than half that in the dud Myer float late last year.
Myer ($2.2 billion), Kathmandu ($332 million) and Carsales.com ($164 million) dominated the first half.
But marine service vessel operator Miclyn Express Offshore ($284 million) was the only float that raised more than $50 million in the second half.
Deloitte said that by the close yesterday, only 24 of the 67 companies that floated were trading at or above their issue price.
The average price move of the companies that floated was a negative 10%.
Mongolian coal explorer Hunnu Coal was the best performing IPO, with its shares rising 408% from the issue price of 20 cents to $1.015.
Myer was amongst the worst, with its share price falling 23%.
Eight of the 10 best performing floats were in the resources sector, which is not hard to understand given that the Australian market is still dominated by commodities.
