On Wednesday, November 29, the Milan Stock Exchange reached a value at the close that it had not reached in 15 years. The FTSE Mib, the main index, closed at 29,688.45 points, a value it has not reached since June 2008. The Italian Stock Exchange has been on the rise for some time, but this year it has shown the strongest growth among European stock exchanges: since January its value has increased 24.4 percent, compared with 12 percent for the Paris Stock Exchange and 16 percent for the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. A very good performance has also been had by the Spanish Stock Exchange, whose value has increased by 22 percent. This is partly because international investors trust how the Italian economy is doing, so they continue to buy stocks listed on the Milan Stock Exchange. But some technical reasons also have something to do with it: the FTSE Mib includes a lot of banks, many more than other European listings do. And the banking sector is gaining a lot from rising interest rates on mortgages and loans: bank stocks are doing particularly well, and Italian stocks have contributed a lot to the performance of the overall index. Behind the index, however, are values in euros, which is how much all the shares of the 40 companies included in the FTSE Mib are worth in total: that's about 620 billion euros.