re: link for asx stock indexes charts
Interesting thread guys, and thanks for the online chart, thought I was going to have to get an A3 scanner.
pj, pretty ingenous, I think you are partly right with the dividend imputation as that is the kind of shift you would expect to see with a big fall in effective business taxation. However, that stockmarket rerating was pretty much an international phenomenon, in the USA as well which has not yet introduced imputation credits (which is why dividends have become almost nonexistent in the States in favour of buybacks).
What did happen on a very broad scale in that period was the deregulation of many financial systems including Australia, which led to the global capital system we now have. As a result international big money was much more inclined to find its way into stocks including Australia's. Interest rates also began to fall in the period and the glut of money started to appear.
Still dont think I have ever seen this 1985-7 period marking the full onset of the present globalisation properly analysed.
