Shareswatch Australia

For the last few years I have been warning that steps needed to be taken to prepare the Australian economy for when the commodities cycles would turn downwards. Back when I first started writing about this, it was almost considered treason to even suggest the mining boom may draw to a close. But these days even the RBA, Treasury and Wayne Swan are talking about the end of the commodities boom.

At the moment there is so much confusion across the global markets that is makes me less reluctant to take long term positions. One day we see Chinese trade data which appears good, but there are questions about its reliability. Over in the U.S the economy appears to be improving, but what will happen when the Fed starts to wind back quantitative easing measures? Meanwhile in Japan, Abenomics is shaking up the markets and there is considerable pressure on leaders across the EU to ease up on austerity measures.

The Australian stock market has posted some good gains recently with the ASX All Ordinaries Index and S&P/ASX 200 Index both closing above 5100 yesterday. Instead of the markets showing some weakness as I expected, they appear to be rallying even despite falls in commodities prices and warning signs that the Chinese economy may start to slow again. This makes it difficult to get a feel for where the markets might be heading and economic stimulus measures in the United States, China and Japan complicate the outlook even further.

It has been quite a week with investors needing to digest the slump in gold prices and also the weakening of commodity prices as well.  Although I have been warning about both a gold and commodities bubble for some time,  I have to admit I didn’t expect the gold price to fall back quite this much, this early.

The Australian stock market appears poised to head lower this week and there are signs that the rally which started in the middle of 2012, is turning into a decent sized correction. Over the next week or so the key areas to watch will be the mining stocks, banking stocks and gold prices. But already if we look at some charts in these areas we can see a trend developing.

This past week we received the final 4^th Quarter GDP number which came in at 0.39%. The total 4^th Quarter growth was terrible, plain and simple. Based on the performance in the equity markets that we have seen thus far in the 1^st Quarter of 2013 investors would expect strong GDP growth. However, the only thing spurring stock market growth is the constant humming of Ben Bernanke’s printing press.

Since mid last year, the Australian stock market has staged a fairly impressive rally with the ASX All Ordinaries Index moving from a decidedly bearish level of down near 4000 to a bull market level of just under 5200 points. But of late the market has slipped back which will worry some investors, while others see this a simply a pause before the rally upwards continues.

According to data released the other day, the Australian economy created around 70,000 positions recently which apparently is very good according to most economists. This is despite the fact that most of the jobs were part-time roles and I saw no breakdown regarding what type of jobs were created. That doesn’t seem to matter, once the media and assorted experts say it’s time to cheer then we are suppose to cheer.

Since mid 2012 the Australian stock market has been on a roll with the ASX All Ords & S&P/ASX 200 both closing today above 5100 points as the bull market continues. When I last looked at a few 52 week high and low stock prices the All Ords/ASX 200 were around 4300 so not surprisingly most stocks are now trading much higher and investors generally should be a happier lot than they were back then. However some stocks have actually fared relatively poorly since October 2011 and this may help us understand what might be moving the stock market at the moment.

WorleyParsons Ltd (ASX: WOR), in line with a recent theme, announced–on the same day it revealed results for the first half of fiscal 2013–a new contract award, this one to provide engineering services at the Fort Hills oil sands project. The work, which will begin immediately, will generate AUD140 million of revenue for WorleyParsons. Fort Hills is jointly owned by Suncor Energy Inc (TSX: SU, NYSE: SU), Total SA (France: FP, NYSE: TOT) and Teck Resources Ltd (TSX: TCK/B, NYSE: TCK).

Gold and silver along with their related miners have been under a lot of selling pressure the last few months. Prices have fallen far enough to make most traders and investors start to panic and close out their long term positions which is a bullish signal in my opinion. My trading tactic for both swing trading and day trading thrive on entering and exiting positions when panic trading hits an investment. General rule of thumb is to buy when others are extremely fearful and cannot hold on to a losing position any longer. When they are selling I am usually slowly accumulating a long position.

Recently every move upwards the stock market takes, no matter how slight, is greeted with almost ecstatic cries of joy from many analysts, finance journalists and assorted market watchers. It’s as if the ASX All Ordinaries was heading towards a new high and investors were being showered with money in the midst of a raging bull market that had no limits. Certainly there have been good returns of late for those investors who timed their entry into market almost perfectly, but for longer term investors it’s more of case of here we go again.

With Japan’s stock market surging even before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled his plans for economic stimulus, we would have expected the usual anti-stimulus critics to be silent, at least for a while. But no. Already we hear the usual complaints — more printing of money, more public debt, more baramake (waste) and so on.

Back in May 2012 when I last reviewed the performance of the Shareswatch Random Stocks Portfolio the S&P/ASX 200 (XJO) closed at 4165. On the 25th January the ASX 200 closed at 4835 which means the XJO has risen by around 13.85% since the last review.  So it will be interesting (for me at least) to see how this randomly selected collection of stocks has been performing against this ASX 200 Index.

The great market prognosticators have by now came out with their 2013 predictions about financial markets. It seems to me to be a fool’s game to try to predict what financial markets are going to do in the future. I want to be clear in stating that I do not know what is going to happen in the future. I do not know where the S&P 500 Index is going to trade tomorrow let alone 6 months from now. Most market pundits simply will not admit to this fact.

Today I am going to review the 1 year performance of three ASX listed blue-chip stocks namely: the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX:CBA)  BHP Billiton (ASX:BHP) and Telstra Corporation (ASX:TLS) to get a feel for how these large companies within the S&P/ASX 200 Index fared during 2012.  Does the performance of these stocks give us any indication of how the wider stock market may fare in 2013 and if so, are these stocks worth watching over the next 12 months?