It was a year ago Wednesday that the stock market’s COVID-19 meltdown began, triggering a slide that took equities into a bear market that bottomed out roughly a month later.
Stocks have since roared back from their March 23 bottom to push into record territory. Analysts at Deutsche Bank broke down the performance by major global financial assets from Feb. 21 through Tuesday. The chart below ranks them by performance, while also showing their maximum drawdown over the past year:
It’s worth noting, though, that two assets that weren’t included in the list of “major” global financial assets have put in an even stronger performance. Bitcoin BTCUSD was up 395.8% over the 12-month period, while the NYSE FAANG+ index of large-cap tech stocks rose 85.8%, noted Deutsche Bank macro strategist Jim Reid, in a note.
“Had you been told 12 months ago that we would now have around 113 million recorded cases and 2.5 million recorded deaths with much of the world under lockdown conditions for most of the year, I suspect you would have found it tough to comprehend the course of markets,” he said.