Stocks Show Downturn in October

November 4, 2005 (PLANSPONSOR.com)—Tides changed in October for the developed world equity markets, as the S&P/Citigroup Developed World Index fell 2.49% for the month.

A reversal from September, Standard & Poor’s global stock market review, The World by Numbers, showed decreases in all three developed world regions; Europe, North America and Asia Pacific lost 3.20%, 2.22% and 2.09%, respectively.

Although the S&P/Citigroup Emerging Markets Index (EMI) is up 14.58% for the year, during October, it had a substantial fall of 6.44%. S&P said the year-to-date increase is a result of emerging market currencies performing better against the Dollar than developed world currencies.

Europe and North America also had declines in both the larger-cap S&P/Citigroup Primary Market Index (PMI) (2.84% loss in Europe and 1.89% loss in North America) and in the S&P/Citigroup Extended Market Index (4.47% and 3.45% losses, respectively).

In the GICS sectors, only Financials posted a gain (0.13%) during the month while one of the best performing sectors of the year, Energy, fell 9.14% for the month.

The S&P/Citigroup World by Numbers Report for October can be found at www.standardandpoors.com .

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