March 2022: higher yields and equity prices on the whole

With higher yields and higher equity prices on the whole in March, the financial markets rebounded surprisingly quickly after the yield and price drops immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Emerging market equities lagged and so did real estate, partly due to higher interest rates.

In the second half of February and the first week of March, the war in Ukraine caused sharp drops in equity markets. Later on, however, most stock exchanges quickly recovered. Over the whole of March, the MSCI Europe index returned +0.8% and the MSCI North America index as much as +4.8%. Nevertheless, Asian stock markets in particular lagged behind, with a monthly return of +0.6% for the MSCI Asia Pacific index and a negative return of 1.1% for the MSCI Emerging Markets index. Stock markets in both developed and emerging Asian markets suffered from the Chinese government’s ‘zero COVID’ policy and especially from the reinstatement of lockdown measures in several major Chinese port cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen.

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