{"id":60043,"date":"2012-06-04T10:21:29","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T00:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/04\/euro-woes-hit-australian-investor-confidence\/"},"modified":"2012-06-04T10:21:29","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T00:21:29","slug":"euro-woes-hit-australian-investor-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/04\/euro-woes-hit-australian-investor-confidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Euro Woes Hit Australian Investor Confidence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n\t<strong>Euro Woes Hit Australian Investor Confidence &#8211; Sentiment Falls To New Low<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\tSentiment among Australian investors has fallen markedly over the past two months. Many respondents to the Australian Investors Sentiment Survey for May, conducted by the Australian Investors&rsquo; Association (<span>AIA<\/span>) and <span>FNArena<\/span>, have turned decidedly bearish.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tPessimism levels are now at a peak of 57% of respondents, beating the 56% reading in September last year. The timing of the latest survey goes a long way in explaining current attitudes, as the survey was conducted after two weeks of share market declines and over the weekend that followed Greece&rsquo;s failure to form a Government.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOver that period, there were minor runs on the major banks of both Greece and Spain. Adding fuel to the fire was commentary from <span>BHP<\/span> and Rio Tinto, who both started talking about cutting growth-related capital expenditure because of a slowdown in China.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tSumming up the current attitude well was Peter Knight from Perth, who said &ldquo;I expect the global situation to worsen as the ineptitude of policy makers reinforces market participant&rsquo;s pessimism. The scale of the task of debt reduction is so huge that there is no possible solution to the problem unless the authorities resolve to allow bond holders to take massive losses and allow many banks to go to the wall.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>\n\tAR <span>Chee<\/span> chimes in with: &ldquo;Every time I start to think markets are improving or at least <span>stabilising<\/span>, another major hiccup turns up. Getting fed up and wondering where else to put my rapidly depleting money. Feel like I&#039;ve had a few sucker punches.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>\n\t&ldquo;Europe is imploding now and until hard decisions are taken the problem will not be fixed. There is the American presidential elections later in the year so no one will make any hard decisions in the run up,&rdquo; said Matt from Brisbane.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/MR-InvestorSentiment2012May-1.jpg\" style=\"width: 670px;height: 287px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\n\tUnsurprisingly, a greater number of survey respondents indicated an intention to take funds out of the share market and into cash and fixed income investments. Respondents indicated circa 24% of portfolios are now allocated to cash. This is up from 22% in March. Equities allocation has dropped from 47% to circa 43% at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tBob <span>Feldmann<\/span> summed up current investor uncertainty as follows: &ldquo;I haven&#039;t got a profound interest in property or fixed income and equities are my way of investing. Keeping a reserve in cash provides comfort in these troublesome times. I want to sleep peacefully&rdquo;.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tOverall investor confidence has now fallen to levels where only one third of respondents expect equity markets to be higher in six months time.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/MR-InvestorSentiment2012May-2.jpg\" style=\"width: 670px;height: 263px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\n\tIn line with all of the above, investor confidence has fallen dramatically since the March survey, with the <span>AIA<\/span> Investor Confidence Index now down to 40.6, the lowest level recorded since its initiation in March 2011.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/MR-InvestorSentiment2012May-3.jpg\" style=\"width: 571px;height: 416px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\n\tThe Investor Sentiment Survey asked members at <span>AIA<\/span> and <span>FNArena<\/span> how they felt about the market and how they were invested. The Survey will be repeated in two months (July 2012). 436 respondents participated through the <span>AIA<\/span> and 203 through <span>FNArena<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<strong>Technical limitations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\t<strong><span style=\"font-style: italic\">If you are reading this story through a third party distribution channel and you cannot see charts included<\/span>, <em>we <span><span>apologise<\/span><\/span>, but technical limitations are to blame.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\n\t<em>Find out why <span>FNArena<\/span> subscribers like the service so much: &quot;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/index4.cfm?type=dsp_newsitem&amp;n=29EB960D-9DFF-C00E-7F6B464E5D52E250\">Your Feedback (Thank You)<\/a>&quot; &#8211; Warning this story contains unashamedly positive feedback on the service provided.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>FNArena&#8217;s May Investor Sentiment Survey has generated a new low showing eurozone woes have definitely hit confidence among Australian investors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}