Not yet out of the woods

There are too many moving parts in play, and the market outlook for 2023 hinges on one's view of inflation and a US recession

Severe wealth destruction globally marked 2022. Both stocks and bonds ended the year down. Global equities, as defined by the MSCI All World Index, declined by almost 20 per cent, their worst performance since 2008. Technology stocks, the darlings of the bull market, led the way down, with the Nasdaq composite index declining by 33 per cent. More specifically, technology titans Tesla and Meta were down as much as 65 per cent.

Bonds were also not the place to hide, with the Bloomberg Multiverse index, tracking global government and corporate debt, declining by 16 per cent, the worst performance for bonds