Having spent the majority of the last month & a half either on vacation or out of the country (or both!), I am very much out of touch with the markets or even major news…but apparently financial armageddon is upon us once again.  Not surprising, as I got my ass handed to me on a continual basis every time I had to use the Euro.

In the time I was away, we have gone from ‘market-sucks-but-at-least-we’ll-trade-sideways’ to ‘elevator-down-to-lowest-levels-in-2-years’, breaking major technical supports with ease along the way.  At this rate, we’ll see the Dow below 10k before the end of the year, complete with riots & looting & other evil shenanigans.

In any case, in the process of getting back ‘in-touch’ with Mother Market, I’ve taken a look at short- & long-term performance of major indices around the world.  I’ve actually just updated my chart from ~5 months ago.  Back then, only 3 of the indices listed were NOT posting a gain since the end of ‘05…now that number has increased to 10.  Brazil & Mexico are the only two that are better off now than before, while China & India have gotten ‘homo-hammered’ even worse than the rest.

This is not a pretty picture, ladies & gents:

Note that ALL of the indices are in the red for the last month as well as for the year (since Christmas) and only the Nikkei is posting a gain for the last 3 months.  Can we (finally) call that a recession?

Where do we go from here?  Long-term, my guess is further down.  3 indices are still posting gains from the end of ‘06…I say death to them!  Once those 3 are down and out, we move on to assailing the gains from the end of ‘05 - the trend is already in the making as I pointed out earlier, with the number of indices in the red increasing from 3 to 10 in half a year (including the S&P and the Nasdaq).