When is the right time to get back into the market?

Added on 4/12/2008 16:00

Not surprisingly this was a question on everyone’s mind at our latest investor seminar on Monday evening.  We had a great turnout at our Darling Park offices in Sydney and it was good to see some familiar faces amongst the crowd.

Peter Ryan, business editor at the ABC,  once again moderated the discussion with Anthony Serhan from Morningstar Research and Chris Caton, Chief Economist from BT Investment Management. We recently added nine BT funds to our platform so we figured it was a good opportunity to get Chris along to provide his forecasts for 2009.

We have been varying the format of our seminar based on feedback from our  previous forum attendees.  I wanted to include some slides and charts (not overly complex) to help stimulate debate. Anthony presented a range of slides which I think the audience appreciated -particularly the comparison between asset classes on a rolling 5 year basis. The discussions covered a wide range of topics from the need to have a diversified portfolio to the impact of selecting growth managers and value managers over the past 20 years.

Anthony also talked about the place for international equities in a diversified investment portfolio while Chris gave his view on the prospects for the local economy, oil prices, interest rates and the Aussie dollar.

Peter asked whether demand from China will help stave off a recession in Australia or is this just too naïve? Of course, house prices always comes up as a question from the audience and last night was no different.

A question on all of our minds is when to get back into the market. Chris speculated on the length of the US recession and how much longer it may last. He pointed out that stock markets generally rally four months before official economic indicators conclude that the recession is over.  There seemed to be general agreement that there is value to be had in the market …where to find it is a different question!

Here’s a sample of some of the feedback we received:

“comforting hearing more informed comment on the ‘larger picture’ from professionals especially when so many of us are unsure at present”.

“appreciate candid comments from the panel”

“learnt a lot, found it interesting and the perfect length…Anthony’s graphs were particularly interesting”.

We also recorded a number of podcasts on the night, which are becoming increasingly popular with our customers.  Peter Ryan recorded two short interviews with Chris and Anthony which are available in our Investor Centre.  We’ve also made a podcast of the full seminar so that people who couldn’t attend on the night can listen to the debate. This is also available in our Investor Centre.

I was interested to learn later that a couple of people in the room were sharing real-time seminar updates with their friends on social networking site Twitter.  We recognise that our customers cannot always attend in person and we plan to continue with the podcasts and trial ‘webinars’ and other new ways to keep you in the loop. More about that soon. I know that I left the seminar knowing a lot more about the markets and how it will influence my investment strategy and I hope that those who attended felt the same way.

Have you got a suggestion for topics we should cover in future seminars and podcasts? I’d love to know.
 

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