Getting Started in Shares For Dummies Australia. Dunn James

in London finally recovered all its lost ground by December 2013 – but has since slipped back below its 2007 peak.

      

The Japanese Nikkei 225 got back to its 2007 peak in February 2015, and is 13 per cent higher than its 2007 peak (but still a long way short – 47 per cent short, in fact – of its all-time high, reached in December 1989).

      

The Hang Seng in Hong Kong has mounted a strong recovery from its 2009 low-point. It’s up 90 per cent from there, but it remains 22 per cent lower than its 2007 peak.

      In Australia, the recovery has seen similar challenges to many global markets. The S&P/ASX 200 Index is still 16 per cent shy of its 2007 peak, despite having risen 60 per cent from its 2009 trough. The same divergence of performance can be seen in stocks. Commonwealth Bank was the first of the Australian banks to regain its pre-crash peak, which it did in October 2012; it now trades 47 per cent above its 2007 peak. Westpac followed in January 2013, and has now risen to 20 per cent above its 2007 peak. ANZ Bank got into clear water in April 2013, and has subsequently added an additional 7 per cent. But National Australia Bank has not yet recovered its pre-GFC high, and remains 19 per cent short of it.

      BHP briefly regained its 2007 high-water mark in March 2011, but then lost value in the iron ore slowdown of 2011 to 2014; BHP now trades at 37 per cent below its 2007 peak. Rio Tinto has never recovered its pre-GFC peak, and is still 55 per cent lower. Telstra was back at its 2007 peak by March 2013, and has moved 33 per cent higher. Wesfarmers and Woolworths both got back to clear water on their share price in February 2013, but have diverged since then, as Wesfarmers’ Coles operation has consistently beaten Woolworths on sales growth: Wesfarmers trades 6 per cent above its pre-GFC peak, while Woolworths has slipped back to fall 16 per cent short (having lost 29 per cent from mid-2014 to mid-2015).

      These companies are all strong businesses, but they can never be considered to be immune to a general market slump – which, thankfully, is a rare event! That’s one of the risks of share investment, but this risk is why stocks generally perform better than other investments over the long term.

      Individual company share prices are fluctuating all the time, and can suffer big falls, as well as spectacular rises. This can be due to company-specific factors, as well as events and sentiment changes that affect the market as a whole. The GFC and the crash it inspired is an extreme example of what causes sharemarkets to fall, but it’s also an example of how – although it can take a long time – the best stocks, and markets in general, do recover.