Shareswatch Australia

If you are confused about the conflicting  reports regarding the Australian economy and outlook for the stock market you are not alone.  Much of this confusion is caused by financial journalists who one day are talking about a double dip recession and then suddenly switch to chirping about a robust Australian economy once some positive economic data appears.

It may not appear to some investors that the stock market is functioning normally again, but the manner by which the  recent correction was quickly reversed indicates that in fact things are getting back to normal. Certainly there is a long way to go before the ASX All Ordinaries crawls back up to 2007 levels, but at least now a correction is just a correction and not the start of a massive wave of panicked selling.

Another year, another decade and time once again to look at our shares portfolio and perhaps review our positions. Although the global financial crisis has been tough for investors the fact is that the Australian stock market did bounce back in 2009 and if history is any guide then we are likely to see it finish higher in 2010.

Over the last year or so I have noticed that many investors get very emotional when talking about bull markets, bear markets and stock market rallies simply because they misunderstand what the terms mean. Often this emotion stems from the fact they have made losses or their investment plan has not performed quite the way they would have liked, and sometimes the reason for this is they did not fully appreciate what bull and bear markets actually are.

As many investors would already know, Listed Investment Companies (LIC’s) can be a relatively straight forward way to diversify a shares or investment portfolio. There are many different types of LIC’s trading on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and these can give an investors exposure to a diversified range of assets.

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.

Nobody likes to see their investment portfolio decrease in value but for most of us, that is what has been happening now for most of 2008. The downturn in the stock market has hit everyone, from top fund managers to amateur stock traders and there must be a lot of nervous people close to selling out of the market.

Back in March this year, I tentatively outlined my market forecast for 2008 based on a number of assumptions as contained in my blog: Are we near the bottom. Since I am the first to admit that forecasts are rarely 100% (or even 80%) correct it would seem now is a prudent time to review my assumptions and update my forecast to cover the last 6 months of this year and a little into CY2009 as well.