Week started in fairly quiet atmosphere. In the first half of the week investors traded in anticipation of an important meeting of the ECB that would take place on January 22nd. In Poland, lack of interest rate cuts by the MPC combined with the relatively convoluted translation of this decision did not really affect the image of trading on the WSE.

Last week brought finally normal, reliable levels of  trading, except the WSE, where extra day of holidays - Epiphany - extended the New Year's weekend. This lack of one trading day turned out to be beneficial for the WSE. 

Last week was a second week of extremely low investment activity and the reason for this was of course a holiday period. New Year's Eve was a non-trading day across most of the stock exchanges. On top of this on many markets  last day of the year was a half-day trading session. Surely this period was not conducive to not only activity, but also variability.

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.