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Around
the World
Global
trading is a real concept.
Not too many decades ago, stocks for the most part
traded on the stock exchanges in New York, Tokyo, and London.
Realistically that was it.
But things have changed during the last handful of
years. Just as
we have had to incorporate after-hours trading in the U.S.
into our thinking, we now have to consider a vast array of
stock markets around the world.
Taking
a quick count, there are stock exchanges in 52 countries that
can be followed by any investor on their personal computer.
Some of these countries, like the U.S. have more than
one place where stocks trade, not even taking into consideration
the exchanges trading options and futures.
After the North American markets close, the next markets
to open are the Pacific and Far East Markets.
While we are returning from a fun-filled weekend on
Sunday evening the Pacific Rim countries are arriving for
work on Monday morning.
The Pacific markets begin trading with the Australia
and New Zealand markets opening at 6pm EST.
The New Zealand markets provide little impact but the
Australian All-Ordinaries Index is followed globally.
At 7pm EST the Japanese and South Korean markets begin
trading, followed shortly as the business day begins by the
Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, and
Thailand. The
most closely followed indexes in the region are the Nikkei
225 in Japan and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong.
Although there are stock exchanges across the Asian
sub-continent and the Middle East the next significant markets
to open are in Europe.
Like Asia, Europe and the eastern block countries have
minor and major markets.
The markets in England, Germany and France are followed
most closely along with their respective indexes, the FTSE
100, DAX, and CAC 40.
The
significance of these different world markets is certainly their
added liquidity to widely held stocks but also as a gauge to
financial news occurring in the U.S. and global markets, and
global political events happening when the U.S. markets are
closed. The Asian
markets have a heavy concentration of hi-tech stocks so it�s
helpful to see how these markets respond to bad news in the
U.S. tech sector. The
Asian markets often get their direction from the U.S. markets.
In turn, the Europeans watch how the Asian markets perform,
and the U.S. markets are influenced by the trading day in Europe.
It�s worth watching how the other world markets around
the world are doing because it will ultimately influence how
your investments perform.
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