Last week bulls have failed all along the line. Moods turned sour firmly because of events in Russia, where ruble lost chunk of its value. Apogee of the decline was noted when Central Bank of Russia rushed to help the currency and raised its key interest rate by 650 basis points to 17%. This supported the ruble only for a short period of time after which currency plunged as much as 20% against the dollar.

Last week was quite scary for investors across almost all global markets, losses were significant. In developed markets, especially Western Europe declines were almost violent. The DAX lost nearly 5%, and the CAC40 went down by as much as 7%. Investors in US lost less than this, however the S&P500 adjustment of 3.5% was also impressive.

Last week a demand side was in power on the WSE. The WIG20 rose by 0.9%, while WIG50 went up by 1%. This  was consistent with the performance of Western Europe indices. The CAC40 and the DAX were also up approx. 1%. In the US, the S & P 500 index scored seventh upward week in the row, ending with an increase of 0.4%.

Last week, negative readings from the US surprised markets. The only positive news was a revision of annualized GDP for the third quarter (from 3.5 to 3.9 %). Important readings as consumer confidence, Chicago PMI index and durable goods orders excluding means of transport were disappointing. These weak numbers did not stop Wall Street from further gains as weaker data are deferring interest rate increases.

Last week has provided a great deal of emotions and substantial volatility. This was influenced by a number of macroeconomic data releases as well as the words of the head of the ECB. At the beginning it seemed that investors’ moods could be affected by poor data from Japan, where GDP fell by 1.6%. This was interpreted as ‘bad news is a good news’ as it calls for more quantitative loosening by the BoJ. Serious threat could have been disappointing data from the Eurozone - PMI from France and Germany was surprisingly poor.