Australian Market outlook - Looking ahead to 2013

Here’s our outlook for four key components of the Australian market and how they could impact you, your lifestyle and the decisions you make in the year ahead.

This year’s report highlights six key themes that our strategist team believe will have the greatest impact on markets and asset returns in 2013:

Most people would probably say they are investors. However, volatility in the markets over the past year or so is testing investors' resolve and revealing many closet speculators.

Investors face an escalating crisis in Europe and slowdowns in the United States, Australia and China. Making it worse, this unsettling outlook follows a period of poor investment returns. Share markets are plunging once more and government bond yields in Australia and the United States are hitting record lows. Andrew Pease, Chief Investment Strategist, Asia Pacific, reveals why equities will bounce back.

Whether you’re a new or experienced investor, the temptation to chase short-term returns can be hard to resist. This table illustrates how different asset classes have performed relative to a multi-asset portfolio diversified across multiple assets, strategies & managers (with an average exposure of 70% growth assets).