The dynamics of the world’s major stock exchanges in the wake of the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires at the beginning of December raises important questions about the medium-term trend of the securities markets.

The stock markets in October held on to the infamous tradition that saw them characterized by selling, recording the worst monthly performance in the US S&P 500 index since 2011 and since 2012 for the MSCI World index.

The decision at the end of September by the US Federal Reserve to raise the base rate a further quarter-point, although widely expected by the market, has however cleared the field from doubts about the prospects for the US, which during the year has resulted in a flattening of the yield curve for US dollar denominated bonds.

The stock market’s summer that is drawing to a close, has confirmed only to a small extent the technical hypothesis that after the correction in the first half of the year we were in an accumulation phase on the primary international stock exchanges; as only the US indices were able to revisit their historical highs, while in all the other markets there were significant declines.

The distribution phase, which has affected the main global stock market indices since the beginning of the year, seems to have been exhausted in mid-July, giving way to a modest recovery which, if it continues, could assume the characteristics of an accumulation phase, which would be a prelude to a better inflection for the markets in the fall.

With mid-year approaching, it is possible to use the dynamics of the securities markets in the first half to assess the prospective scenarios from now until the end of 2018.

Halfway through the Spring season, the international stock markets have been marked by a constant recovery from the correction of February and March, which has the obvious technical hallmarks of distribution.