MARKETS SPECTATOR: Brennan the bull

Tony Brennan, the Citigroup Australian stock strategist and one of the market’s most voracious bulls, is still at it.

He says the Australian dollar’s fall against the US currency will help boost earnings in the 2014 financial year by 3 percentage points. Brennan and his colleagues at Citi estimate that net profit growth in the Australian stock market in 2014 will be 10.5 per cent.

“This is likely to be a conservative estimate given the difficulties in modeling the impact, and also because the Australian dollar could fall more,” writes Brennan in a research note.

The Australian dollar has dropped 13 per cent against the US currency since its 52-week high on January 10 of $1.0598, according to Bloomberg data. It was trading at 1501 AEST at 92.47 US cents compared with 92.95 US cents yesterday, according to Bloomberg.

The S&P/ASX200 Index was down 120.281, or 2.5 per cent, to 4741.10, after falling as much as 2.7 per cent to 4729 points. The index has slid 9.1 per cent since its 52-week high of 5220.987 on May 14.

Brennan has a year-end forecast for the index of 5,400.