Although the rapid spread of the Omicron variant briefly gave investors the jitters, equity markets closed December higher. The MSCI global equity index noted a plus of nearly 4% . At a return of 1.6% emerging markets again lagged behind industrialised countries, which climbed by 4.2%. That brought another wonderful year for equities to a close, with gains of 16.8% for the global index. There are sizeable differences between regions though. While European equities, which earned a return of 20.4%, were more or less able to keep up with their US counterparts (+26.9%), equities from the Pacific region marked time and emerging market equities were down by 4.6%. The AEX posted an excellent performance of 27.7%, while UK equities lagged behind the global index somewhat at a return of 14.4%.No text in field