Stock Market: The Barometer of Economy's Health

Stock markets are barometer of the economy's health & prospects for the times to come. Markets are nothing but a decisive way towards collective trend of thinking of its participants. The market trend specifies the direction of thinking, regarding optimism or pessimism, in the mind of the market participants. Likewise, a volatile market reflects intense fluttering of ‘UNCERTAINTY’ in terms of whereabouts of forces that dictate market trend.

Stock markets are usually ahead of the ground realities like actual GDP performance and Economic conditions of the country. Like, for instance, the Indian equity markets started plummeting from the early part of the calender year 2008 around the month of January, whereas the worst was experienced by the actual economy in the later half of the same calender year 2008 around the quarter October to December of the same year.

Due to this specific nature of market's tendency of estimating visibility into the future, the movement of the equity markets are based on estimates of the company's future earnings prospects and visibility. That is the reason as to why market's shall often forgive the disappointing performance of company in current period of contention, only if its future earning prospects is healthy and clear.