Shareswatch Australia

An overdue stock market correction is currently working it’s way across global markets and as usual spooked investors have been selling out of the financials and mining stocks in Australia.  Once again this illustrates just how feeble the ASX All Ords and ASX 200 are and how dangerously unbalanced the Australian economy is.  But is the current correction anything out of the ordinary?

We are almost through a third of 2011 and the mood across global markets appears to be decidedly downbeat.  The bullish voices of late 2010 have now faded and even the Reserve Bank of Australia and Federal Treasurer are sounding cautious. But don’t be fooled by the talk that recent events have caused the global economy to face headwinds because the reality is that 2011 was always going to be a tough year.

Fosters Group Limited (ASX:FGL) is a blue-chip ASX-listed Australian beverage company with a wide range of brands covering beer, wine, spirits and ciders.  Over the last few years the company has faced a number of challenges and is now in the process of trying to improve it’s underlying business and deliver better value for shareholders.

Over the last few months it has become increasingly difficult to write about the Australian stock market simply because not much has been happening.  During the last 12 months the market has basically moved sideways with just the occasional dip or rally to break up the boredom.

Welcome to the Shareswatch Australia – one of Australia’s premier stock market and investment blogs plus a free source of independent stock market investing views and analysis.

It is time once again to put my ramblings, rants and ruminations for the previous 12 months under the spotlight. Did I correctly spot any stock market or economic trends or should I be standing in the corner with the dunce cap on for most of 2010?

Well 2009 is almost over and although stock market investors did it tough in the first quarter, overall the ASX All Ordinaries and S&P/ASX 200 posted healthy gains of around 30%. This means stocks & shares were in fact a good place to have your money over the last 12 months.

Harvey Norman is a retailer of household electrical appliances, personal computers and furniture & fittings with stores in Australia, New
Zealand, Slovenia, Ireland, Singapore and Malaysia. The company started with the opening of a single store in 1982 and was listed on the Australian stock exchange in 1987.

Although I do not trade stocks based on technical analysis I do often look at stock market technical charts to simply see if they might be indicating a trend. Of course there is no guarantee any trend shown in these charts will continue, but a quick look at some candlesticks charts of the All Ordinaries Index does reveal a few interesting patterns.

Well it is time to reflect once again on some of the stock positions I have taken over the last 6 months or so. Although this is often a painful experience, I would suggest to anyone who invests in shares to regularly reflect on how their portfolio is tracking and revisit the reasons why they purchased (or sold) a particular stock. Often we can learn a little about our own investing style if we have a brutal look at our past investments and this may help us make better investment decisions in the future.

Few precious metals stir the emotions of investors quite as much as gold. But just as it stirs emotions, it also causes many people to forget about the basics of investing and plunge into gold seeking their fortune, only to suffer losses and heartache. Currently there is a lot of focus on gold as it is seen as a good asset to hold in times of trouble, so now seems like a good time to have a look at what drives gold prices and other gold market fundamentals.

There is something you should have noticed by now about most of the finance and stock market related news websites and that is; they are great at picking the best and worst investment events of the past, but they say very little about how accurate their analysis of events were throughout the year.