Piazza Affari is almost at record levels this year, having regained the levels of 2001, shortly after the bursting of the Dot-com bubble, which had brought the market to all-time records in March 2000, when the Nasdaq index had reached a peak of 5,132.52 points, on the wave of purchases of Silicon Valley companies.
The closure of the FTSE MIB yesterday wiped out the effects of the financial crisis that broke out in 2007, which had led to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and, subsequently, to the outbreak of the debt crisis in Europe, to the widening of the spreads of the most indebted European periphery, to the Troika missions and to the bailouts with conditions granted to countries such as Portugal, Spain and Greece. But that’s history.
FTSE at highest since 2001
The FTSE MIB, the main benchmark index of the Italian stock market, closed yesterday with a rise of 1.24% to 44,438.88 points, reaching an intraday high of 44,450.16 points. Thanks to this rise, the index surpassed the peak of 44,364 points marked in May 2007, recovering all the losses triggered by the global financial crisis and returning to the highest levels since February 2001, shortly after the bursting of the Dot-com bubble. The FTSE MIB, which has already achieved a 30% increase this year, had closed 2024 with a rise of 12.6%, 2023 with an increase of 28% and 2022 with a decline of 13.3%.
Piazza Affari cuts the ribbon last
The FTSE MIB, which measures the performance of the 40 most liquid and capitalized Italian shares on the Milan Stock Exchange, is the last major European index to recover the declines created by the 2007 financial crisis. The index of the 40 Italian Blue-Chips has outperformed the Stoxx Europe 600 index this year, achieving an increase of around 30% against the +14% recorded by the pan-European index, which is currently at its historic highs. Piazza Affari did even better than Frankfurt, where the DAX recorded a +21%, and London, where the Footsie 100 recorded a +21%, while Paris saw the Cac-40 rise by around 10%, due to the political stalemate that hit the transalpine market. Madrid, on the other hand, did better than Milan, where the IBEX-35 rose by over 41%.
Wall Street at historic highs
The performance of Piazza Affari, although appreciable, is nothing compared to that of Wall Street, which merely updates historical highs, thanks to the copious purchases of technology stocks, in particular those linked to artificial intelligence, so much so that there is talk of a new speculative bubble in the tech sector. The Nasdaq composite index is currently trading at 23,468.3 points and the Nasdaq 100 (representative of the 100 most capitalized companies) at 25,533.49 points, more or less five times the 5,000 points (and some change) reached in February 2001. This year, the Nasdaq has gained 21% and continues to dictate the trend of global stock markets, while we think about the possibility of a more or less marked correction.
