Manly Daily: It's 12 o'clock high [22feb06]

Manly Daily: It's 12 o'clock high [22feb06]: "It's 12 o'clock high
BILL HARCOURT
22feb06

ACCORDING to the investment clock it's about midnight. Is it time to get into cash and snuggle down until dawn?

An investment clock illustrates the recurring eight to 11-year business cycle as a clock face. A reader emailed: 'Could you do an article on the economic cycle, including a diagram and expand the dynamics between shares, real estate, cash, bonds, gold, interest rates, the US economic influence, etc.'
This is a bit of a tall order in a few hundred words so the clock analogy is probably the simplest way. Go to Google, plug in 'investment clock' and you will find a number of clock faces. They vary but generally 12 o'clock is the top of the boom and 6 o'clock the bottom of the recession.
At 6, interest rates are dropped to stimulate the economy. This causes share prices to start rising. There is a lot of cheap money around now but businesses are still afraid to expand so they invest in the stockmarket. After 9 they gain confidence and invest in their businesses. The stockmarket pauses while commodity and other input prices start to rise.
The investment climate becomes euphoric. Cheap money is invested in real estate. Property prices take off.
The economy becomes overheated. The clock strikes 12. The central bank (Reserve Bank in Australia), fearing inflation, raises interest rates. Money becomes tight. Real estate, share and commodity prices fall and we are back to 6 when the Reserve Bank drops interest rates again to pump prime the economy. The new business cycle commences.
But wait a minute. Australia has had 14 years of uninterrupted economic expansion. Something extraordinary must be taking place.
The answer lies in China's dynamic expansion in the past decade, wi"