The Australian market

For all those who watch the market closely and saw today’s slump snap two days of wild gains on our Aussie stock market, with some bigger stocks reaching a two week high, it is a case of (literally) two steps forward, one step back. This comes as Wall Street falls into the heavy realisation that it really doesn’t matter what [US Treasury Secretary Henry] Paulson and the gang do over the coming weeks to avert financial catastrophe — the recession in the US is going to be deep, and there just ain’t no getting aw ay from it. But just how much that will really hurt us remains to be seen. There’s no doubt our market has been just as battered as the US markets in the past 6 or so months — some say unfairly, given that the fundamentals of our banks and financials remans just as strong as they were during the last bull run.We have to be able to convince investors both domestic and foreign that our market is worth investing in, that we’re on the way up, and that a very strong mining industry coupled with sound financial institutions makes a country — and a market — worthy of investing in.As Americans get more and more scared to invest in US equities — as seen by those unprecedented spikes in gold as investors flock to its safe haven — why don’t they consider the Australian market? Just like there were sales people in Australia selling ‘safe’ Lehman Brothers bonds to local councils — how many Australian spruikers are over in the States letting American investors know that Australia, the world’s sandpit, is a pretty good place to park your dough right now?And is it safe enough to be spruiking such things? Those that called the bottom of our market yesterday weren’t shouted down by screaming pessimists — and they weren’t fools either. If the educated guess is that we’re at the bottom — let’s let a few more people know about it, and get some money back in there. Because with a whole layer of sellers wiped out of the market for the next 29 days, surely, the only way is up. By Joanna Townsend,September 23, 2008