May’s sell-off was all Donald Trump’s work.
Trump renewed his trade war in a May 5 tweet putting up tariffs on $US200 billion of Chinese exports to the US put an end to the rally shares had seen since December with US, Eurozone, Japanese and Chinese shares all losing around 7% in May.
Australian shares fell 0.9% over the last week as post-election euphoria faded with utilities, property, consumer staples, and energy shares hard hit, but the election result boost still saw them rise 0.92% in May.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 ended 1.3% lower at 2,752.06 on Friday, while the Dow dropped more than 350 points, or 1.4%. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 114.57 points, or 1.51%, to 7,453.15.
The Nasdaq ended down for the week 2.4% for the week. The Dow fell 3% last week and the S&P 500 was off 2.6% after falls of 1.4% and 1.3% respectively on Friday.
The S&P posted a 6.6% monthly loss, while the Dow fell 6.7%. The Nasdaq fell 8.7%.
The ASX 200 is up 13.29% for the year so far, better than the S&P 500 which is up 9.8%, the Dow’s 6.3% gain and the Nasdaq’s 12.3% gain.
The losses for the S&P 500 and the Dow were first monthly loss of 2019 and biggest May falls since 2010.
The monthly fall was smaller though than the more-than-9% decline suffered by the S&P 500 in December.
In Europe a similar story with the Stoxx 600 index shed 5.4% last month, with the German Dax off 5.5%, France’s CAC dropped 6.1% and the Italian market slumped 9%.
And in Asia, it was the same as well – China’s Shanghai market fell more than 5% last month, the Nikkei fell 7.4% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng market dropped more than 10%.
