How much did the different stock market indices actually decline during May? And which markets declined more, the US markets, the Asian markets or the European markets?

At Stock Trend Investing, we made a quick overview for you to get an answer to these questions. Some of the observations are surprising.

• Europe has the debt problem but US markets declined more than the European markets.
• Germany has to bail out Greece, but the German DAX showed one of the smallest declines of all markets.
• The Indian BSE is very robust and shows only a small decline as well.
• Japanese exports are growing like crazy compared to a year ago, but the Japanese Nikkei lost most of all.
• The Chinese Shanghai Composite Index is making a big drop a second month in a row, but it is not clear yet if this is just a temporary correction or the beginning of a longer downturn.
• Nothing could stop Gold at the moment. Another month that the Gold price is going up.

Yes, the declines of the stock market indices were substantial during May. However, investors should see these declines in perspective of the gains made since Q1 2009.

If you only stepped into the market at the end of 2009 or during this year, these declines hurt. Stock Trend Investors who are reading our monthly Gold Member updates (claim now your risk-free trial membership) stepped into the market already in the beginning of Q2 2009 and have made by now very substantial gains. The market declines during May are substantial in itself but are minor compared to the gains made before.

For the Japanese Nikkei index for example, we saw at the beginning of 2010 that the Initial Trend Expectation was going down and we left that particular market at that moment already.

The still unanswered question we have now is if we are dealing in Europe, US and Asia with a short correction or with the beginning of a longer down trend. We will come back to this question in our blog posts the coming weeks.

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