World stocks end up after historic annual losses

By Clive McKeef

NEW YORK (Reuters) - World stock markets ended on an uptick for the year on Wednesday, after some bourses registered their worst annual losses in history.

Global stocks as measured by the MSCI world index .MIWD00000PUS ended up 0.76 percent for the day and posted their first monthly gain in seven months, but lost 43.36 percent for the year.

About $14 trillion in market capitalization was erased from world stock markets in 2008 in the wake of the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"It has been a shocking year, hardly anything was spared in the carnage," said Michael Heffernan, strategist at Austock Group in Australia.

U.S. stocks edged up on Wednesday and saw their first monthly gain in five months, but the year has been the worst for Wall Street stocks since the Great Depression.

Continuing weekly U.S. jobless claims remained at their highest level since 1982 in Labor Department data on Wednesday, but investors took some heart from confirmation by the Federal Reserve on Tuesday that it would try to lower home mortgage rates further by buying mortgage bonds in 2009.

Interest rates on U.S. 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped for a ninth consecutive week, reaching their lowest level in 37 years, with the 30-year fixed rate at 5.10 percent, according to home funding company Freddie Mac on Wednesday.

The worst global credit crisis since the 1930s began with the bursting of the U.S. house price bubble in 2007, which resulted in more than $500 billion of losses on mortgage-related securities for U.S. banks alone.