Shareswatch Australia

The ASX All Ordinaries Index and S&P/ASX 200 Index finished much lower than I expected in 2011, so this makes me somewhat reluctant to go on record and make an Australian stock market forecast for 2012. However the process of looking at the various economic data and trying to guess where the market will end is a useful one, so foolishly I will outline once again my Australian stock market forecast for the year ahead.

As we approach the end of another year we should not be surprised by the economic turmoil in Europe, the ailing U.S. economy or the rumblings of a major slowdown in the Chinese property market. The signs that all was not well with the global economy have been raised on this humble site going back more than a year. Simply put, borrowing vast sums of money and splashing it around did not fix the global economic imbalances highlighted by the market meltdown in 2008.

Prices for hard commodities such as copper, iron ore & coal have risen strongly over the past decade and are now trading well above their long term historical averages.  This in turn drove the ASX All Ordinaries Index to a bull market high in 2007 and has helped put some support under the market ever since.  But is it realistic to expect high commodities prices will keep propping up the Australian stock market?

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.

As another year starts it’s time for me to make another stock market forecast, one which I will probably regret making in just a few months time. Generally speaking, I expect that 2011 is not going to be particularly kind to the Australian economy and therefore my Australian stock market forecast is not going to make market bulls very happy.

The Australian stock market has been trading in a fairly narrow range since hitting a yearly low in late May, however over the last few weeks it has pressed above 4600 and we could see it move further towards 5000 in the weeks ahead.  In addition some interesting trends are emerging in terms of gold, oil and gas prices and and they might be giving us a good indication of where the market is heading next.

In the 1960’s the Japanese rightwing had a problem. The leftwing was arguing strongly that Japan’s postwar economy badly needed access to the markets and raw materials of China, North Korea and the Soviet Union if it was to survive (in prewar years it had depended heavily on China and the Korean peninsula for both).

Despite a fairly nasty stock market correction over the last few weeks the Australian market did not fall anywhere near the lows of March 2009 and as I have been saying for nearly a year, we won’t see those levels again for some time,  if ever.  So now that the market correction appears to be over, what are stocks, oil and gold prices likely to do during the next few months.

All hail to the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, for according to the communiqué from G20 meeting in Washington, they have saved the world from a financial crisis and will now lead us into a new era of growing global trade. Of course if the G20 actually functioned properly in the first place we would not be in the mess we are in now, but I guess they don’t talk about that much at the meeting.

Yesterday the ASX All Ordinaries finally closed above 5000 and many stock market investors will now be wondering if this is the start of another period of rising stock prices, or simply the prelude to another downwards correction. Well the answer to both questions  in my opinion, is yes.

I have a message for those people who fled to the hills over the last few years fearing that global trade was going to collapse, paper money would be worthless and that gold would be the only thing worth owning for years to come and that message is:  “the global economy is recovering, please come back and join the rest of us”.

Back in the 2008/2009 when home prices in parts of Europe and the United States were tumbling there were plenty of “experts” saying Australian house prices would also come crashing down. But alas the residential property market remained fairly robust during the global financial crisis and the experts who predicted a crash in property prices were wrong.

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.

As the end of the year approaches it is time once again to contemplate how stocks may perform over the next 12 months. There are plenty of views around of course that range from the super bearish (i.e. there will be another stock market crash) to super bullish, (i.e. markets will surge to dizzying new heights) but I will steer clear of both extremes. So at the risk of being very wrong, very soon, let me now underwhelm you with my outlook for the Australian share market in 2010.

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.

Recently you have probably noticed that gold prices are getting plenty of media coverage and we are often hearing predictions that gold will hit $2000 USD an ounce in the not too distant future. Sadly what is often not highlighted is that gold is rising mainly because the U.S. dollar is falling and that the demand for gold is largely being supported up by investors.