Share and bond market

Global markets in 2015 were strongly affected by the policies of central banks and the economic standing of the Eurozone, the US and China. These events directly affected equity valuations in Poland and abroad.

In early 2015, there were two significant occurrences: the European Central Bank’s announcement regarding the purchase of treasury bonds of the Eurozone countries and the release of Swiss franc exchange rate. The latter triggered numerous doubts regarding the functioning of the bank system in Poland. The subsequent quarter of 2015 remained under a strong influence of ever-increasing problems of Greece and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

The second half of the year brought a breakdown on the Chinese market, which had a negative impact on share prices both in Poland and abroad. What is more, the situation in the country was exacerbated by the perspective of introducing a new burden for the banking sector, which was to become reality after parliamentary elections in October 2015. The last quarter did not result in any improvement. The US Central Bank increased its interest rate by 25 bps in December (first increase since 2006), the prices of raw materials were going down (particularly oil prices – a decline of 35% year-on-year), and the European Central Bank announced the intention of easing its monetary policy to a lesser extent that it was expected.

The deterioration in the situation on the markets was reflected by the MSCI Index (Morgan Stanley Capital International Index) for emerging markets that plummeted by 17.1%. The MSCI Poland Index also deteriorated materially in Q4 2015 in comparison with that index.The above events had a significant influence on the Polish debt market. In entire 2015, the Polish treasury bonds yield of 5-year and 10-year treasuries grew by 10 and 40 bps to 2.2% and 2.9% respectively.

Deterioration of situation on the markets was reflected in the MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International Index) for emerging markets, which fell by 17.1%. In relation to this index, in 4Q 2015 there was also a significant weakening of the MSCI Poland index. This resulted from a substantial decline in bank capitalization on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.