A Notable Quarter of Global Asset Inflation:

PrudentBear.com - The One-Stop Shop for the Bear Case: "I believe it’s worth detailing the first quarter’s broad based global equities market asset inflation. London’s FTSE100 gained 6.15%, Germany’s DAX 10.29%, France’s CAC40 10.72%, Spain’s IBEX 10.44%, the Swiss Market Index 5.79%, Italy’s MIB 7.40%, Portugal’s PSI 17.71%, the Irish Overall Index 9.53%, Iceland’s ICEX index 6.50%, Netherland’s Amsterdam Exchanges Index 7.30%, Belgium’s BEL20 10.2%, Luxembourg LuxX index 14.6%, Denmark’s OMX Copenhagen 20 0.4%, Finland’s Helsinki index 15.2%, Norway’s OBX index 18.1%, Sweden’s Stockholm 30 index 10.41%, and Austria’s Austrian Traded ATX 12.9%.

Greece’s major equities index jumped 12.5%, Turkey 7.9%, Cyprus 44.4%, Malta 30.7%, Bulgaria 5.4%, Poland 13.0%, Czech Republic 3.5%, Hungary 11.0%, Romania 13.9%, Ukraine 21.3%, Slovakia 0.9%, and Croatia 21.8%. On the downside, Slovenia declined 4.1%, Estonia slipped 0.4%, Latvia dropped 8.9%, and Lithuania fell 5.1%. The major equities index in South Africa jumped 11.43%, Tunisia 15.8%, Morocco 32.8%, Namibia 14.5%, Botswana 9.68%, Egypt 4.4% and Kenya 3.6%.

Some of the highflying Middle East markets came back to earth a little. The Kuwait Global index fell 12.24%, Qatar’s DSM index dropped 19.1%, Israel’s Tel Aviv 25 index declined 1.2%, Bahrain fell 3.6% and Jordan dropped 13.7%. The wild Saudi SE index actually ended the quarter up 2.08%, with a 52-week gain of 62%.

Asia remains strong. The Nikkei 225 rose 5.89%, with a 12-month rise of 46%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 6.24%, Ch"