Shareswatch Australia

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.

Have you noticed of late how the Australian stock market is just not listening to the Reserve Bank’s Glenn Stevens? No matter how optimistic the RBA Governor sounds the ASX All Ords refuses to surge past 5000, so what is happening? Are investors wrong about the state of the Australian economy and simply not picking up on the positive economic indicators the RBA is apparently seeing?

Recently there has been a lot of joyous reporting about the massive Gorgon Project and the expected boost that the Australian economy will get from  multi-billion dollar LNG export contracts. However is Australia really getting a good deal for it’s LNG and as a nation, are are we tapping into all the benefits we should be getting from this massive project?

After the strong stock market rally today I think we can safely say the bear market of 2008-2009 is now well and truly over. The ASX All Ordinaries & ASX 200 are still clearly trending upwards and commentators who were predicting a Global Depression just a few months ago have started adjusting their forecasts.

Despite howls of  “it’s a sucker’s rally” from some market commentators, Australian stocks have gradually pushed up since bottoming out earlier in the year. While nobody can say for sure what will happen over the next few months a look at the gold price and some stock market charts can at least tell us what is happening now.

Investing can often stir people’s emotions and nothing seems to get people fired up more than when the topic of which asset class or investment will provide the best returns is discussed. So rather than try and pick “the” best asset class, perhaps it is useful to just discuss some of their various strengths and weaknesses without trying to predict future prices or capital gains etc.