After the worst start to any year in the S&P/ASX 200’s history, financial planners have become optimistic about the rest of 2008, a recent study showed.
A majority of advisers expected modest to high growth to come by investing in the local share market this year, according to Macquarie’s Equity Markets Group’s (MEMG) survey.
Only 3 per cent of advisers suggested their clients should not buy shares.
The S&P/ASX 200, fell 15.5 per cent to 5355 points in the first quarter, marking its poorest start to a year since its inception in 2000.
The benchmark closed yesterday at 5823 points.
“Close to 40 per cent of advisers say their clients are increasingly looking to buy shares following six months of steady declines,” MEMG associate director Pia Cooke said.
MEMG surveyed 1000 advisers across Australia.
However answers for where the best opportunities lay were mixed with 49 per cent of planners backing international equities as the better investment while 45 per cent tipped local equities to give the best returns.
The Canadian benchmark, the S&P/TSX Composite, which also comprises of mainly energy, financial and materials companies, became the first developed stock market this year to break its 2007-set record highs, surging past 15,000 points this week.
The MSCI Emerging Markets Index, made up of companies from emerging economies like China and Brazil, reversed its losses for the year this week.
There was also an increase in the use of structured products, MEMG’s survey showed, with nearly half of the repondants saying they used more structured products for tax planning.
Furthermore almost 62 per cent of advisers said they would recommend structured products to their self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) clients.
Cooke said that the increased use of structured products was probably been driven by clients’ “worries about having enough money in retirement”.
