Low inflation and strong balance sheets underpin domestic equities outlook

Low inflation and strong balance sheets underpin domestic equities outlook. We're quite optimistic about equity markets, particularly in Australia. We think that conditions are right for equity markets to do well. And the main conditions are that we think we are in a low inflationary environment, for quite some time. We're also a considerable way past the epicentre of the GFC, so we're now in excess of seven years past the worst of the GFC. So what we think is that people can start to think about the future, and invest for the future. So what we anticipate is that at present, if we look at Australian equities, the Australian equity market actually offers investors close to the highest dividend yield in the world. And when we also look at corporate balance sheets; we think that Australian shares are very under geared. One of the things that Australian Listed Companies did was they raised a lot of equity and retired a lot of debt, through the GFC. So balance sheets look fantastic.