The Australian sharemarket followed the lead from Wall Street to record one of its steepest monthly losses in June. The S&P ASX 200 fell by 8.9% in June to be down 11.8% in 2022. Adding back dividends, the total return for the year sits just shy of -10%.

Interestingly, small- and mid-cap stocks have been absolutely pummelled. As is often the case when the market gets the wobbles, a ‘flight to safety' occurred as institutions sought the liquidity and relative quality afforded by the major cap stocks. The ‘top 20’ stocks by market capitalization lost 6.2% on average, whereas the midcaps (stocks ranked 51^st to 100^th by market cap) are down 16.9%. The pain in small caps (stocks ranked 101^st to 300^th  by market cap) is even worse – a staggering -23.7%.

Sharemarket Returns by Market Capitalisation

All industry sectors, with the exception of consumer staples, were negative in June.

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