As of October 2024, the industry weighting of the financial industry in the Hang Seng Composite Index (HSCI) accounted for 29 percent. It was the largest subsection within the index, followed by the consumer discretionary sector. The index includes the top 95th percentile of companies at the Hong Kong Exchange.

As of April 2025, the Hang Seng Index at the Hong Kong Exchange amounted to ********* points. After the outbreak of COVID-19, the index dropped as part of a broader Pan-Asian trend. However, by the end of 2020, when the pandemic situation stabilized in many countries and news about a vaccine rollout came out, the Hang Seng Index recovered and recorded significant increases every month. Index composition The Hang Seng Index is the most prominent indicator of stock performance on the Hong Kong Exchange. By including the 50 largest companies, the index represents the market movements of more than half of the bourse’s market capitalization. In addition to that, the Hang Seng Index has numerous smaller indices which mirror smaller industries or market sections. The Hang Seng Composite Index One example of a sub-index is the Hang Seng Composite Index. It reflects the performance of the top 95 percentile of the total market capitalization. The financial industry accounted for the largest share of companies included in the index, followed by the information technology sector. Prominent companies represented in the index are Tencent, AIA, and Meituan.

While the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic caused all major stock market indices to fall sharply in March 2020, both the extent of the decline at this time, and the shape of the subsequent recovery, have varied greatly. For example, on March 15, 2020, major European markets and traditional stocks in the United States had shed around 40 percent of their value compared to January 5, 2020. However, Asian markets and the NASDAQ Composite Index only shed around 20 to 25 percent of their value. A similar story can be seen with the post-coronavirus recovery. As of November 14, 2021 the NASDAQ composite index value was around 65 percent higher than in January 2020, while most other markets were only between 20 and 40 percent higher.

Why did the NASDAQ recover the quickest?

Based in New York City, the NASDAQ is famously considered a proxy for the technology industry as many of the world’s largest technology industries choose to list there. And it just so happens that technology was the sector to perform the best during the coronavirus pandemic. Accordingly, many of the largest companies who benefitted the most from the pandemic such as Amazon, PayPal and Netflix, are listed on the NADSAQ, helping it to recover the fastest of the major stock exchanges worldwide.

Which markets suffered the most?

The energy sector was the worst hit by the global COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, oil companies share prices suffered large declines over 2020 as demand for oil plummeted while workers found themselves no longer needing to commute, and the tourism industry ground to a halt. In addition, overall share prices in two major stock exchanges – the London Stock Exchange (as represented by the FTSE 100 index) and Hong Kong (as represented by the Hang Seng index) – have notably recovered slower than other major exchanges. However, in both these, the underlying issue behind the slower recovery likely has more to do with political events unrelated to the coronavirus than it does with the pandemic – namely Brexit and general political unrest, respectively.