The eFinancialCareers 2011 APAC Bonus Survey reveals that a third (33%) of surveyed finance professional in Australia experienced a decrease in their bonuses in 2011 compared to 2010. This resulted in a 28% reduction in the average bonus payout in Australia for 2011.

34% of Australians enjoyed an increase in their bonus in 2011.  Looking at country differences, finance professionals in Australia faired similarly to Hong Kong and China and slightly better than their counterparts in Singapore. Top earners across the region saw the highest decrease. Those in the highest salary quintile (top 20% salary level) were much more likely to report a decline in bonus (47%) than those in the bottom salary quintile (29%).    

Table 1: How did your 2011 bonus compare to the previous year’s bonus?

Source: eFinancialCareers 2011 APAC Bonus Survey

Those Australian’s with an increase were most likely to cite ‘personal performance’ (46%) and those with a decrease were most likely to cite ‘firm performance’ (49%) for their bonus change in 2011.

Respondents were asked about ‘satisfaction’ with their bonus and also how it compared to their expectations.  Across the region, satisfaction levels with bonus payments were at their highest in Australia, where nearly half (45%) said they were either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied. This compared to four in ten respondents (40%) in both Singapore and, Hong Kong and China.  The highest 2011 mean bonus in the region was also paid in Australia, and the lowest in Singapore.

Table 2: How satisfied are you with your 2011 bonus?

Please note totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Source: eFinancialCareers 2011 APAC Bonus Survey

In Australia 38% of respondents reported their bonus ‘was beneath expectations’, with the regional average being 41%. Only 13% of financial employees in Australia said their 2011 bonus ‘exceeded expectations’.

Table 3: Did your 2011 bonus meet your expectations?

Source: eFinancialCareers 2011 APAC Bonus Survey

“Considering the results from the investment banks in the 2^nd half of 2011 these figures should be of no surprise,” comments George McFerran, Managing Director, Asia Pacific, eFinancialCareers.  “Disappointment among finance professionals, however, should not be ignored, as it is a legitimate source of concern. Firms may not fear retention reprisals this season, given the targeted layoffs and moderation in recruitment activity, but top performers may consider moving on if a better opportunity comes along.”

eFinancialCareers launched its 2011 APAC Compensation Survey to preview the level of bonuses given to financial professionals within the banking and financial sectors.  The survey took place between February 13 and March 6, 2012, with 1,269 financial markets professionals who are bonus-eligible and know the amount of their annual bonus before responding. Of the respondents,  343 were based in Hong Kong and China, 674 in Singapore and 252 in Australia.

While redundancies and offshoring continue, HR teams say they working hard to retain people in the business, or find them work elsewhere.

“During downturns firms are especially loath to lose employees – particularly the essential ones – and face the expensive prospect of replacing them,” said Managing Director eFinancialCareers Asia-Pacific, George McFerran.

“Many finance firms are giving their HR teams directives to ‘re-home’ staff, but to do that requires influencing hiring managers to think outside the square.”

Financial planning and insurance (especially claims and underwriting) is currently providing a small measure of employment hope to banking-sector candidates who are out of work. There are also pockets of hiring in the advisory businesses of the big four accountancy firms.

While career progression is critical to avoiding attrition, it is becoming harder to offer this to staff in the current log-jammed employment market.

“Some banks are allowing staff to achieve career progression by moving to other parts of the business on internal secondments, with the possibility of returning to their original department if opportunities arise,” said Mr McFerran. “Mobility is currently a big part of retention.”

Yet retention isn’t just about high-level, career-changing policies. Day-to-day issues, like start and finish times, also matter. Firms reported losing staff to government departments in Canberra because of the shorter hours expected there.

“Some pundits have warned that analysts and associates, who have never experienced the pre-GFC ‘good times’, might soon consider options outside of financial services if their workloads keep increasing. I think this is counsel worth listening to.” said Mr McFerran.

Are Australian Banks looking for pass the buck?

Australian banks are said to be amongst the healthiest in the world and yet they have recently taken a policy of raising lending rates. Only this week it was reported that the reason behind the move is pressure on banks by some of their big shareholders. I question whether this announcement is a way for the banks to distance themselves from the blame game that usually erupts in the media when the public takes a dim view of big banks with multi-billion dollar profits raising rates outside of any adjustments by the RBA. Alternatively, to be fair, we need to consider whether their decision to lift rates simply demonstrates the reality of the current economic climate where listed companies are constantly under pressure from major shareholders to perform. Either way, if the banks move rates too far in opposition to the RBA they will be in the firing line of the public and the politicians.

Janine Cox is the Senior Analyst at Wealth Within, a private investment company specialising in managing direct share portfolios through their Individual Managed Account Service. The company is also a government accredited specialist share market educator, where Janine is one of only two lead trainers educating people how to invest and trade the share market. Janine can be contacted at info@wealthwithin.com.au or you can visit the website www.wealthwithin.com.au.

Looking further ahead, however, confidence seems to ebb: nearly five in 10 respondents (48%) predict bonuses will decrease over the next three years.

Eight in 10 (80%) finance professionals in Australia believe they will receive a bonus this year.  Three in 10 (30%) expect a decrease in comparison to the previous year, while slightly less (28%) anticipate an increase. Over two in 10 (22%) reckon their bonus will remain the same, while the remaining 20% don’t expect a bonus at all this year.

In comparison to the rest of the Asia Pacific region, finance professionals in Australia are slightly less optimistic than their counterparts in Greater China.  In Singapore, a third of respondents (33%) take a more conservative view and expect their bonus to decrease this year – compared to 30% of respondents in both Greater China and Australia.

Table 1:  What do you expect to happen to your 2011 bonus compared to 2010?

Please note totals may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Source: eFinancialCareers APAC Bonus Expectations Survey, January 2012

With regard to compensation, over seven in 10 respondents (72%) had a change in their base salary in the past year.  Out of those, nearly nine in 10 (88%) were given an increase.

Bleak outlook for bonuses

Asked to make a prediction about bonus sizes over the next three years, nearly half of the respondents (48%) say they expect bonuses to decrease in the future, 22% anticipate bonuses to stay the same, and only 18% predict that bonuses will increase. Over two thirds of respondents (67%) cited market conditions as the key factor that concerns them in relation to their bonus, believing that the tumultuous market will potentially lead to a downward influence on total compensation.

eFinancialCareers Head of Asia Pacific, George McFerran, comments: “Despite Australia’s better than average global economic performance, Australian finance professionals have a rather sober outlook in terms of their bonus expectations this year – and for the immediate future. No doubt this is fuelled by tightening conditions in global financial markets.”

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It is a common myth that trading with Forex is confusing. That myth only proves true for those that do not bother doing their research before trading. Fortunately, this article offers some very safe and effective advice.

There are account packages for you to choose from that are based on your level of experience and your goals. Be realistic about what you can accomplish given your current knowledge of Forex trading. You will not become a professional trader overnight. Keeping your leverage low will help to protect you from the impact of wild swings in the market. If you’re a beginner, use a mini practice account, which doesn’t have much risk. Learn the basics of trading before you risk large amounts of money.

Think about whether you want to be involved with Forex permanently or temporarily. If you want to stick with it for a period of time, the first thing you should do is organize the information that has already been established by people who have been working with forex for many years. Create a list of things you must do to prepare for Forex trading, and that study the list extensively for months before beginning to trade. That way, you can take all these skills and put them together to become an expert forex trader.

It is important to keep emotions out of your trading. Remain calm. Stay focused. Remain composed. You will need to keep your cool if you are going to succeed.

Take a notebook wherever you go. This way, you’ll be able to capture useful information on the markets no matter where or when you hear it. You can also use a notebook when tracking your progress. You can also review older tips to check their continued applicability.

whether its domestic cleaning, carpets or yankee candles.Forex depends on the economy more than other markets. Before engaging in Forex trades, learn about trade imbalances, interest rates, fiscal and monetary policy. Without an understanding of these basics, you will not be a successful trader.

Treat your stop point as if it is written in stone. Before you begin trading decide how much you are willing to risk, your stop point, and do not move it. When you move a stop point, you are acting under the influence of stress or greed and are usually not making a rational decision. You can lose a lot by doing this.

Bask in the glow of any Forex success. Retrieve your earned money by requesting it from your broker via a withdrawal order. If you are making money with Forex, you deserve to enjoy it!

Forex news is available all over the web at any time you’d like. You can look on the Internet, search on Twitter and look on the news channels. News that applies to forex is omnipresent. News that relates to money is always a hit, so it’s a common topic.

Your own judgment is the best tool to use when trading, but don’t be afraid to trade ideas and tactics with other traders. What others have to say about the markets is certainly valuable information, but don’t let them decide on a course of action for you.

Engaging in the forex markets is a serious undertaking and should not be viewed as entertainment. It is not for thrill-seekers and adventurers, who are destined to fail. These people should stick to casinos and gambling for their thrills.

Once you become comfortable with forex trading, it will become easier to invest. Remember that your research should always be capped off with the most recent information you can find, as the market continuously changes. You will need to keep researching websites that have to do with forex; it is an ever changing field.

We’ve been told we don’t have a crisis as Australia’s unemployment rate is low, however, since the GFC a lot of Australians have been underemployed. Remember that a person only has to work one hour to be considered employed and the fallout from the GFC meant that a lot of people are working less hours than was previously the case.

One way to put things in perspective is to look at the under utilisation rate which was on a clear downward trend prior to the GFC, but since then it has been trending up. Therefore, while the unemployment rate is low at the moment I would suggest the real number could be a lot higher depending on how you dissect the employment data. Add this consideration to the further job losses on the cards this year and unemployment will become a much bigger concern.

Wages verses corporate profits

The Financial industry continue to battle against the tide of issues in the current part of the economic cycle and in the wake we’ve seen some of the big corporates argue about wage restraint in this country, on the basis that increases in the cost of labour have not kept pace with productivity. While there may be evidence to suggest this is the case, in my opinion it’s important to also consider the rise in real wages verses the profits of some of the big blue chip companies over the recent decade.

While wages may have grown by around 3.0 per cent pa, corporate profits have gone up in many multiples and in some cases hundreds of percentage points above this rate.

Janine Cox is the Senior Analyst at Wealth Within, a private investment company specialising in managing direct share portfolios through their Individual Managed Account Service. The company is also a government accredited specialist share market educator, where Janine is one of only two lead trainers educating people how to invest and trade the share market. Janine can be contacted at info@wealthwithin.com.au or you can visit the website www.wealthwithin.com.au.

Says Lynch “I and Safety in the Market have been trading a long time with the prevailing trends, we have concerns that the trend is not indefinite and that February will be an interesting month to watch.”

“We may get one more price shock to the downside,” said Lynch, whose trading career started as early as 1999. “February can be an interesting time in the market statistically and cyclically. Some of our longer term cycle projections suggest that we might see February produce an environment for volatility and changes in trends.”

The S&P ASX 200, the Australian share benchmark, gained about 5 per cent in January, underperforming the MSCI All-country index, which rose 5.8 per cent. It was the global index’s best performance since it climbed 6.5 per cent in January 1994, Bloomberg wrote on Feb. 2. The increase prompted global strategists, including Larry Hatheway, UBS AG’s chief economist, to abandon their bearish outlooks, according to Bloomberg.

“I am of the view that last year’s lows didn’t represent enough pessimism,” said Lynch, who prefers to take a more neutral to bearish outlook on the share market. “There wasn’t that level of extreme pessimism which you would like to see with big market lows.”

Shares Rise Before Falling

The Australian share market has hovered between the 4,000 and 4,300 mark since the start of the year and last closed at 4,290.71*. “The market often gets bullish and it likes to retest where it has been,” said Lynch. “If it gets defeated, the sentiment changes very quickly and the market will tank again.”

In technical analysis, traders use historical data to form charts that forecast future price trends. Virtually all fund managers and institutional traders use charting software to help make trading decisions. In volatile markets technical analysts can influence markets as news flow tends to be more difficult to read and fundamental analysts adopt a more cautious stance and liquidity reduces.

As the market rises, investor confidence will prompt a buying spree, said Lynch, who also writes for Yahoo!7 Finance, Your Trading Edge and Stocks and Commodities. “Those people, whose job is to buy at the top; they will be the last people that will probably push this market high enough and then I am thinking the catalyst would be Europe.”

The European debt crisis has dragged on for more than a year. While the problem appeared contained following tough rules on borrowings agreed last month and an approval to increase the Eurozone rescue fund to one-trillion euros (A$1.2 trillion) from 440 billion in October 2011, concerns remain that Greece will still default on its debts.

The Greek economy shrank 5.5 per cent last year and is expected to shrink another 2.8 per cent this year. Public spending soared and public sector wages doubled in the past decade. It has more than 340 billion euros of debt, about 31,000 euros per person for a country of 11 million people. While money flowed out of government’s coffers, its income has been hit by widespread tax evasion. The Greek government has a debt repayment due on 20 March.

No Capital Growth in Next 18 Months

“I see no capital growth through shares in the next 18 months, and I don’t believe we will return to what I would term an investors market where you can buy and hold,” said Lynch.

“2003 was the start of the last decent one,” said Lynch. The Australian All Ordinaries climbed from about 2,800 points in 2003 to more than 6,500 points in 2007 before the October 2008 crash. “People think I am anti buy and hold. I am anti buy and hold in the wrong cycle.”

Lynch and many other analysts expect current market volatility to continue. Europe will remain a source of volatility, Shane Oliver, Head of Investment Strategy and Chief Economist at AMP Capital Investors, said in the 25th January issue of Oliver’s Insights.

However, unlike Lynch, Oliver expects 2012 to be a better year for shares compared with 2011 in part because of an improved global economic outlook and reduced risks regarding Europe. “This is also supported by the fact that shares are starting the year on share market valuations well below year-ago levels,” he said in his newsletter.

U.S. Market to Fall to 8,000 Points?

While Lynch is neutral to bearish about the Australian market, Joseph Granville, an 88-year old technical analysis veteran in the U.S., holds a far more extreme view about the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He expects the index to fall to 8,000 points by the end of 2012. The DJIA is currently trading around 12,700 points.

“Volume precedes prices,” Granville, a technical analyst who has been publishing the Granville Market Letter from Kansas City, Missouri for about 50 years, said in an interview on “Street Smart” on Bloomberg Television. “You are seeing much lower volume. That tells you that prices are going to go much lower, much lower than most people think possible and very few people have projected.”

Granville correctly forecast the bear market of 1977-78 and the burst of the Internet bubble that began in 2000. In March 2008, Granville said the Dow would end the year near 9,000, more than 27 per cent below its level of 12,392.66 at the time. The index finished the year at 8,776.39.

His predictions proved less prescient during some of the previous bull markets. He failed to foresee the rally that started in 1982 and lasted for five years. He also called for losses in 1995 while the S&P 500 rose every year till 2000, according to Bloomberg.

As the share market takes a respite from Eurozone crisis and focuses on a stronger U.S. labour market and slower Chinese inflation, the global market is currently awash with reports and analysis that current gains in equities may be sustainable, and could lead to a rising trend and a better 2012 for investors. But Lynch prefers to stick to his cautious stance.

“The beautiful thing is if I am completely wrong I will just go long and buy the market,” said Lynch.

Disclaimer

The publication does not take into account the investment objectives, financial situation and needs of any particular person. Before making an investment decision on the basis of the information provided within this publication, the investor or the prospective investor need to consider, with or without the assistance of a Licensed Adviser, whether the information provided and related investment decisions are appropriate in light of the investment needs, objectives and financial circumstances of the investor or the prospective investor.

*Denotes value at end of trading closure as at 08/02/2012

Now I am attempting to think of what next? I’m pondering a place, perhaps even a Facebook page or group where there may be more interaction, perhaps far more participation from the girls that are now getting more curious about finance.

In my actual day job, as a home-loan broker I’ve seen more ladies taking on investment properties; some have even now dabbled in development finance for bigger developments- something they might not had the confidence to get the team together to do before.

Strangley the client of mine that made the most money was a19 year old girl, who never earned more than 40k a year! She just acquired investment units in mining towns. Cashflow positive from the first day and have now tripled in price!

There are some things deeply satisfying in knowing such a young, smart girl did so well! I bet nobody in her office has any concept she made over 1 million in assets while she was the most junior person in the company, living in shared places with her boyfriend. Now he wants to buy some property! She’s still deciding if she will help him with his research.

Virginia Graham managesCentral Coast Mortgage Brokerand was formerly a loan rate dealer, stockbroker and worked in accounting. Virginia is a recognized finance expert on channel 7, 9 and for local Australian papers and MMM radio.