Last week was marked by an unprecedented price drop on many markets. The S&P 500 Index fell 3.5% over the previous week, which is a recordhigh drop over the last two and a half years. Weekly losses turned out to be even dramatic on other, less stable, markets. In particular, the British FTSE 100 Index lost 6.6% over the previous week, while the Russian RTS Index dived 12.1%.

The moods of stock market participants were influenced by a swift fall of petroleum prices: over the previous week, this commodity became 10% cheaper. Petroleum prices have already been going down for a long period of time; however, few analysts could assume that prices for black gold will drop so seriously. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) downgraded its forecast for 2015 regarding the demand for petroleum supplied by the cartel by 300,000 barrels per day compared to the earlier expected indicator of up to 28.9 million barrels per day.

Financial markets survey 15.12.2014