Charts of the year: The big moments for Gilts, crypto and the dollar

For most investors, in 2022, a year was forgotten. Inthalation stocks were bad enough, but since bonds also suffered from an inflation thrust and an aggressive reaction from the central banks, the fund managers could often hide anywhere. Flinty hedge funds that can rely on the dollar and against government debt are among the few who celebrate a good year.

It was also a year that was characterized by really extraordinary events, in areas that are as songs as British government bonds and as wild as crypto. Here reporters of the Financial Times have selected their market charts of the year, which summarize the greatest moments and strongest trends.

The pension market that turned

The increasing inflation and a global increase in interest rates have a miserable year for bond investors.

The 16 percent decrease in the Bloomberg Global Agregate Bond Index- a broad yardstick for state and corporate debts- is the worst performance of the data that goes back until 1991, and places all other relatively rare annual swings for fixed-income securities over the past three decades in the shade.

At the beginning of 2022, investors and central bankers still stated that the galloping inflation could be tamed by relatively modest interest rate increases. However, the raw material price shock as a result of the Russian invasion in Ukraine destroyed these hopes. Inflation surprised almost all year round, even when the central banks in the United States, Great Britain and the euro zone initiated one of the fastest tightening cycles in history.

The return on 10-year-old US state bonds-a yardstick for global fixed-income securities-achieved a maximum of over 4.3 percent in October after it started the year with around 1.5 percent, which contributed to a decline in global shares by 20 percent. Since then, the returns have fallen to 3.9 percent after the US inflation has slowed down-the latest data for November show a decrease to relatively tame 7.1 percent of the annual rate, after a maximum of over 9 percent at the beginning of the year. But investors will seek for a further confirmation that the price pressure in the USA and elsewhere will decrease before they call the end of a brutal sale of bonds. Tommy Stubbington

Gilts has become wild

even in a year unprecedented volatility stood out on the bond markets. When Liz Truss suggested a package of non-financed tax reductions of £ 45 billion in September in her 44-day term of office, the market collapsed.

Investors were not only unsettled about the extent of the planned borrowing, which came in addition to the considerable invoice for a widely expected energy subsidy for households, but also about the decision to continue without analysis by the official budget supervisory authority.

The price for Gilts collapsed and let the returns skyrocket. This in turn triggered a crisis in the British pension sector, where many so -called liability -driven funds had charged levered bets on low yields and had to meet urgent demands. When they sold long-running Gilts to get the necessary money, the market for British government bonds, according to the Bank of England, got into a "self-reinforcing" downward spiral that was forced to intervene with an emergency bond purchase program. The fluctuations of the 30-year-old return on September 28, when the BoE passed for the first time, was greater one day than in most years.

Real calm only returned to the SUR with the resignation of truss and the waiver of her tax cuts by successor Rishi Sunak. It was widely considered the victory of the so-called Bond Bürgerwehren, which had passed a government that exceeded the limits of a responsible financial policy. Tommy Stubbington

Natgas: Flame thrower

If there is a raw material that tells the history of 2022, then it is natural gas where Europe has learned a hard lesson in energy policy.

After the EU was dependent on the invasion of Vladimir Putin's invasion of 40 percent of its gas on Russia, the struggle for replacement deliveries from Moscow dominated all other markets.

The Russian bottleneck in gas deliveries began before the invasion when Moscow tried to make Europe softer for what was to come. But it reached its climax this summer when exports were set to Germany on the important pipeline Nordstream 1.

by August, prices had increased to over € 300 per megawatt hour - or more than $ 500 per barrel in oil - which fueled a crisis of living costs, a galloping inflation and even fears of an economic collapse.

but the market worked. Europe has saved enough gas to start winter, and endless loads of liquefied natural gas sucked in while the demand is reduced. So far there have been no real bottlenecks. The prices remain breathtakingly high compared to the norm, but have more than halved since August.

Now the concerns are already moving to the next winter, with a big question whether Europe can replenish the camps, while the Russian deliveries are almost completely cut off. David Schäfer

The big nickel cucumber of the LME

nickel is usually a boring raw material used in stainless steel with a sexy growth history for its use in electric vehicle batteries, but in March it made headlines for the wrong reason.

The metal was traded at average $ 15,000 per ton for years. But the prices rose by $ 280 percent per ton in a single day, when the fear of sanctions against Russia-a large nickel producer-with a bet on falling prices from Tsingshan, the world's largest stainless steel company that built, rubbed huge nickel projects in Indonesia.

The historical price increase caused the London Metal Exchange to suspend and cancel trade worth billions of dollars, which was triggered by one of the greatest crises in the 145-year history of the stock exchange, as participants who benefited from almost $ 500 million and traders asked why nothing was done earlier.

The full extent of the crisis later showed itself against legal claims when defending the LME. Cash requirements for trade would have driven clearing members to bankruptcy, which would have driven the LME clearing house in default of payment and even risked infection on the financial markets.

Since trauma, retailers have withdrawn from the use of the LME contract for Nickel, who serves as a global standard for producers and sellers to complete business. The thin liquidity has led to a return to volatile price fluctuations.

The chaos on the nickel market is far from over - the LME will not find any quick solutions to restore the trust in its contract and its stricken reputation. Harry Dempsey

was broken as crypto

The cryptocurrency industry suffers from its own “clay moment” with falling wealth prices and a chain of errors in over-indebted and often poorly guided market brokers. The biggest of all is of course the late FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried now feels the full force of criminal and civil cases that a hundred-year-old prison sentence could bring in. The foundation for this crisis was laid at the beginning of crypto, but the spark for the meltdown came in May.

At that time, the Terra crypto token imploded-an idea of ​​the Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon, which is now on the run. The so -called "stablecoin" should have a solid evaluation of $ 1 per piece according to a scheme that is supported by algorithms and blind belief. But in May his value collapsed to zero and pulled large parts of the cryptor room with it, starting with his sister token Luna.

A shortened story of what happened next includes the failure of the crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which was liquidated in June; Celsius Network (Slogan: "Debank Yourself"), which registered bankruptcy in July; And a lot of other agents who ironically saved at that time by Bankman-Fried. Scott chipolina

The year of King Dollar

In a chaotic year for the markets, a constant was the US dollar, which in September, compared to a basket of six other main currencies, climbed to a 20-year high-an increase of 26 percent since May 2021.

The dollar devastated a variety of other currencies, including the euro that sank to Parity in July, and the pound of Sterling, which, after the catastrophic "Mini" budget, crashed to an all-time low in September. China's Renminbi has also reached its lowest level since 2007, while Japan broke and intervened strongly to strengthen the yen - which it tried to push down and not upwards.

Support for the dollar came from the search of investors for a port to park their money, while increasing inflation and Russia's invasion in Ukraine have hit the global financial markets.

Now the US inflation seems to fall and the dollar too. The slow-growing US economic growth and the growing expectations of a so-called "Pivot" of the US Federal Reserve to slower interest rate increases or even reductions in 2023 are going out to a "recipe for a weaker dollar", says Kit Juckes, Macrostrate at Société Générale.

others are not so sure. The Greenback may have reached its climax, they argue, but that doesn't mean that it will continue to fall next year.

"Our basic assessment is that the tightening of the central banks will support the dollar a little longer in recessions than most expect," says Chris Turner, Global Head of Markets at ING. Georg Steer

How the Ruble got out of the TOKE

Russia's ruble became an unlikely comeback child this year. Today he is stronger than the dollar than before the Russian invasion of Ukraine after a sharp decline in the first time.

After the outbreak of the war, the currency initially lost value and fell in the days and weeks after the Russian central bank had more than doubled to 20 percent at the end of February to calm the country's financial markets, to about 130 compared to the dollar.

his rescue does not reflect a wave of investment to Russia. Instead, Putin's impression helped strict capital controls and blockages for foreign dealers who wanted to give up their investments, the ruble to compensate for these losses by April.

The end of the year brought a new phase of the ruin weakness, so that the currency remained to the dollar at 72. Georg Steer