Speaking at a lunch in Sydney yesterday, Mr Batchelor said investors – particularly those with self-managed superannuation funds – would be wise to diversify into foreign markets.
“I hear a lot of talk about superannuation and the like, and the main reason the average punter is disillusioned with some of their super funds is because they have been invested in funds that are tracking the index – and the index has gone nowhere,” Mr Batchelor said.
“In fact, if you look back six years, and it is almost six years to the day, the market is down by 20 per cent.
“But if you take a shorter timeframe, we are up 25 per cent in the last 12 months. That is really why we are seeing this bullish sentiment at the moment.”
Skaffold, an online stock research application with 2,000 members, of which five per cent are financial advisers, recently surveyed more than 200 investors and found 46 per cent of them are looking to increase their exposure to the market.
“Sometimes there is a plethora of opportunities in the market, but now is not one of those times,” Mr Batchelor said. “However, we are seeing a lot more value in some of the overseas markets.”
When it came to buying intentions in international markets, more than two-thirds of respondents said they intended to maintain current exposures to offshore markets.
More than one quarter said they would increase exposure, and only five per cent said they would decrease their offshore holdings.
“Another area that we are quite interested in at the moment is what I like to call ‘boring tech’. In other words, those tech companies that are no longer cool. Not Twitter or Facebook, but companies like Microsoft and Cisco,” Mr Batchelor said.
“When you look at companies like Microsoft, they are still trading at quite a discount.”
