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Optimism for higher growth has led to a revision of global economic growth forecasts. The estimated growth during 2021 for the US and emerging markets has been revised upwards to 7.5% and 6% respectively.
On 3rd February, the world reached a psychologically significant milestone as the number of people vaccinated against Covid-19 exceeded the number of confirmed cases, according to the Financial Times vaccine tracker.
The US and China continue to remain exceptions to the slowdown in developed markets due to the imposition of further social restrictions. In fact, China’s economy has now recovered to a higher level of GDP than pre-crisis.
The pandemic took a turn for the worse over Q4 as new infection rates rose significantly. However, concerns over the rising infections were overshadowed by the US election result and announcements regarding the approval and efficacy of vaccines.
Global equities posted the largest one-month gain since 2008 following the news of positive trial results of several COVID-19 vaccines. Furthermore, the vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech was found to be more than 90% effective.
Despite many leading economic indicators suggesting that global trade has returned to an upward trajectory in October, after the steep drops in May and June, only the MSCI Emerging Markets and CSI China Securities 300 indices (from the worlds main stock markets) provided positive returns during October, returning 2.04% and 4.05% respectively.