Our analysis uses constituents of the STOXX® Europe Total Market Index (“STOXX Europe TMI”), which covers about 95% of the free float in Europe.
In 2023, the global economy still faces a lot of uncertainty, with the challenges faced over the past three years, such as COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, still reverberating in today’s economy as many economies are still absorbing the shocks. While it seems that recovery is on the way, the forces that shaped the world in 2022 are likely to continue. Inflation has started to soften in many regions, but the rapid rise in interest rates to fight inflation led to other impacts, as seen with the recent turbulence in the banking sector. Equity markets are still volatile in 2023. The daily average of the volatility index on the EURO STOXX 50® index (VSTOXX®) during the first three months of 2023 was lower than the 2022 overall daily average. However, the 2023 year-to-date daily average is still more than 30% higher than the overall daily average of 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic started).
