Shareswatch Australia

It wasn’t that long ago when ex-Treasury Head Ken Henry talked about the Australian economy being in a ‘Golden Age’. I guess when you can retire on a lucrative public service pension and then parachute into a highly paid job as an advisor to the Prime Minister the future does probably seem bright. But now in early 2012 as unemployment appears set to rise and the economy is showing signs of weakness, Ken Henry’s ‘Golden Age’ comment might end up in the same category as Tim Flannery’s ‘Dams will no longer fill’ prediction.

As I write today the Australian stock market has slumped around -4% so far after the Dow Jones fell -4.3% and markets in Europe also ended sharply lower. As per usual, many finance journalists are hurriedly pumping out scary stories and dramatic headlines to gain readers attention so it’s time to grab a cup of coffee, relax and focus on the facts.

As each week passes the moans of struggling businesses grow louder and finally it appears that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) board members have woken up to the fact that the economy has been sliding backwards since late 2010. Once again the RBA had made a tactical blunder and raised rates too high just as they did as the global financial crisis was unfolding back in late 2007.

As the year has progressed I have noticed that my view of the Australian stock market and economy has become increasingly at odds with most of the mainstream market commentators back in Australia.  Whereas they see reasons to be optimistic and feel the economy is robust, I feel the situation is quite different and believe the Australian economy is dangerously unbalanced and possibly primed for a nasty correction.

When it is hard to make sense of what is going on with the global economy I feel it is often best to try and remove the noise created by endless stock market reports, economic surveys, financial forecasts etc. and try and focus on facts not fiction. It also helps to put aside people’s opinions (including our own), relax and calmly assess what the data is really telling us, as opposed to trying to use this data to predict the future.

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?

Economic indicators such as the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), trade figures, oil prices & ABS data. Click on charts for a larger view. For stock market, shares and commodities related charts follow this link.

Sometimes when confronted by a seemingly endless barrage of economic data it is beneficial to just grab a cup of coffee and calmly review a few stock market related charts to see if they are trying to tell us something. Yes it is pretty chaotic in the global economy these days but believe it or not, some order appears to be creeping back into the Australian stock market.