Shareswatch Australia

An extended stock market market downturn such as the one we are experiencing now provides long term investors with an opportunity to gauge how well companies have been able to deal with harsh economic conditions.  So today let’s have a look at four consumer spending related Australian listed companies and see how they have fared over the last five years.

On a daily basis, dozens of finance and business journalists try to convince the general public that they somehow have an insight into what the Australian economy is doing or how the economy will fare over the next six months or so. But the truth is, nobody has a clue what will happen for the rest of this year as we are still stuck in the Economic Twilight Zone.

On budget night Wayne Swan could have saved us all a lot of time by simply standing up and saying that his plan for the Australian economy was to simply sit back and hope the mining boom continued. As I have said for over a year now, Australian policy makers have set the economy up for a severe downturn if commodities prices slump and there is no Plan B.

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.

Now that the major stock markets around the world are falling the Australian media have become obsessed with the concept of a “two speed economy”. I am not sure who first started using this term, maybe it was the gurus at the Treasury or the Reserve Bank, but in my view there is no such thing as a two speed economy. The situation we have now is that the economy has simply been mismanaged.

The Reserve Bank is clearly now back in the mood to fight inflation and the recent decision to rise interest rates confirms that they believe the Australian economy will fare well in 2010. But if their economic outlook is correct, then why haven’t stocks rallied further?

One year has now passed since the failure of Lehman Brothers sent global financial markets plunging and only recently has it felt that the global economy may finally be entering a period of recovery. But will conditions be better or worse in 12 months? Will house prices be higher or lower and where will Australian stocks be in September 2010?

The tentative signs of a global recovery (albeit a weak one) are becoming stronger each day and people who predicted a global depression have faded from view.  So the Australian economy is poised for growth again and everything is back on track right? Well not quite.

It has been hard to write much about the Japanese economy of late simply because the economic data appeared to change every day. But over the last few weeks things do seem to have stabilised and both the government and the private sector in Japan generally agree that the economy probably hit the bottom earlier this year.

It seems the Australian government is in the mood to throw money around in order to try and lessen the impact of the recession, but one option that does not seem to have been raised is for the government to establish another sovereign wealth fund. This new fund could act as means of supporting the stock market and provide a source of income over future years to maintain spending on such things as national infrastructure and healthcare.

Often economists, journalists and politicians use so much jargon when talking about the current economic situation that is is hard to follow what they are actually trying to say. Economists for example cannot seem to agree on anything except that they are legends in their own minds, journalists try and fumble through economic discussions and politicians simply try and convince us they know what they are talking about. The simple fact is much of the time all three groups talk utter rubbish.

Most investors in the stock market are today looking at some nasty losses in their portfolios. Some investors may have already sold shares and incurred losses while others may be nursing stocks that have lost 50% or more of their value since late 2007 and hoping they will recover some value. The question that confronts all of us now is: what do I do from this point onwards?

If you have read mainstream media reports about the Japanese economy lately then it is likely you have been bombarded with articles about the plight of temporary workers and the plunge in profits at companies like Toyota. This has probably conveyed an image to you that Japan Inc. is on the verge of collapse, however nothing could be further from the truth because even in the midst of this global crisis, Japanese companies are looking towards the future and making sure they are ready to bounce back with the global economy improves.

One thing all investors would like to know is if the Australian Stock Market has reached a bottom and when things will start to recover. Like everyone else, I cannot predict the future but I can at least outline what I think (hope) will happen and how I am positioning my own investments.