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. The U.S. Treasury and the Fed have been trying to stabilize the housing market by recapitalizing banks and lowering mortgage rates, while President-elect Barack Obama has proposed a huge fiscal stimulus package of more than $500 billion in 2009. "There is general optimism that the new administration will come forth with some policies that are going to help," said Peter Jankovskis, director of research at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois. The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI ended up 108.00 points or 1.25 percent, at 8,776.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index .SPX finished up 12.61 points, or 1.42 percent, at 903.25. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC closed up 26.33 points, or 1.70 percent, at 1,577.03. The benchmark S&P 500 index has recovered about 18 percent since hitting an 11-year low on November 20, but for the year saw its biggest annual fall since 1937: 38.49 percent. European shares closed higher in holiday-thinned trade on Wednesday, with the FTSEurofirst 300 .FTEU3 index of top European shares up 0.9 percent at 831.97 points -- while slumping 45 percent in 2008. The DJ Stoxx basic resources index .SXPP, home of Europe's biggest mining companies, was the worst hit in 2008, sinking 64.9 percent, closely followed by the DJ Stoxx banking index .SX7P, down 64.8 percent. In Japan the Nikkei stock average fell 42 percent in 2008, the worst loss in its 58-year history, though the benchmark index gained 1.3 percent on its final half-day of trade.

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