Christine Lagarde "And it’s about to get worse....."

Stock market volatility has been crazy lately!

Stocks dropped 21% from May to October of this year. But most of that drop happened within two to three weeks. That means investors saw 20% of their investment wealth disappear in a matter of days.

Why the market scare?

It’s the dreaded European debt crisis that keeps infecting markets from here to China. And it’s about to get worse, according to the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Christine Lagarde.

IMF’s Lagarde Paints an
Ugly Picture of 2012

On Thursday, Christine Lagarde gave some alarming comments about where the market is heading. She said, “the European debt crisis is growing to the point that it won’t be solved by one group of countries.”

She went on to say that countries had better work together or “there is no economy in the world, whether low-income countries, emerging markets, middle-income countries or super-advanced economies that will be immune to the crisis.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

It’s just one more sign that the volatility to stocks will likely get worse before it gets better as we head into 2012.

Sean Hyman
Editor, Currency Cross Trader