The champion of the selfies says all is not gloom.
The strategist best known for charting the rise of the "selfies" as a force in the Australian sharemarket is predicting that the nation's top companies face a reinvention test in 2016. However, Hasan Tevfik is far from bearish.
While fund managers are highly aware of the challenges facing the S&P/ASX 200 this year, they probably underestimate the appeal of Australian assets to global investors, he argues. 
That is one of the factors supporting his more bullish index target of 6000 points. The market has to break through 5000 points first.
"During times of panic, quality companies stand out - and Australia relative to the rest of the region is one big quality company," the Credit Suisse strategist says.
The domestic market struggled in the second half of 2015 as the "heavyweights" occupying the top 20 faced the reality of capital raisings, competition and the beginnings of the commodity crisis at great cost to investors.
"Australia stands out relative to the rest of the world having these massive companies. The United States has massive companies as well, but it seems like they're more efficient and they generate more cash and they easily beat their cost of capital," observes Tevfik.
At the same time as Australian companies get a grip on these pressures, there is a more subtle changing of the guard under way.
"  Maybe the reinvention test here is that some of the companies which have served us well over the last 20 years are now dropping away and some of the companies which are benefiting from this economic transition - we're perhaps seeing a market transition as well. If you remove the top-20 companies the ASX hasn't done all that badly."
Sometimes, what's missing is a bit of perspective.
"Fund managers always underestimate two things: how attractive Australia is relative to the rest of the world - we're this beacon of well-run-ness," he says. The other piece missing from the collective conscious is just how low the cost of financing is.
"What a lost decade often gives you is a low cost of debt. This environment of low interest rates, easy finance is going to be here for some time." That means looking at those companies in a position to buy back their own stock or buy other companies, or even become takeover targets in their own right.
Tevfik returned to Australia at the end of 2013 after nine years in London at Citigroup where he worked alongside one of the world's most influential strategists, Robert Buckland, credited for his research on the cult of equity and later, the rise of the bond refugees.
His interest in markets was fuelled by Dr Imad Moosa, his supervisor at La Trobe (and now RMIT) where Tevfik completed his honours in economics. Having grown up in Broadmeadows, he was keen for a break from Melbourne and found his first job in research, also at Credit Suisse.
The way he sees it, it's a great time to be an analyst. "I think good research is vital, more so than what it has been in the past," he argues. "I was working with Robert in the global strategy team comparing Silicon Valley software companies to industrial companies in Munich, to auto companies in Tokyo. I was warned and constantly asked 'How are you going to deal with the boredom in the Australian market?' The Australian market is deep enough to keep anyone interested."
It's also fortuitously positioned as a disciplined developed market on the edge of a fast-evolving region.
Much of Tevfik's research has been informed by the biases of self-managed superannuation fund investors.
Stunned by their growth, he started attending SMSF seminars in his spare time to hear first hand what kind of questions they asked and understand more about their investment objectives which were linked heavily to dividends.
"There's nowhere else in the world where the eventual retiree controls so much money ... They're big and they control everything down to the single asset," he says. "You go to these self-managed-super seminars and you realise these guys are really intelligent: the sort of questions they ask are the questions you expect from a lot of institutional investors."
Now, as Australia faces its reinvention test, the objectives of "selfies" and professional fund managers are closely aligned.
"Are Aussie companies up to providing that income? That's the real test. I think Aussie companies are kept honest by the institutional investors in Australia who from what I've noticed are probably more aggressive than his or her peers in Europe or the US.
"They don't mind telling the company what they think especially when it comes to capital allocation. At least we have the watchdog of the institutional investor keeping our companies honest. He or she stops companies doing stupid things."
Outside of work, the confessed nerd rides a fixed-gear bike and reads financial literature from Michael Lewis to the authority on value investing, Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor. His other recommendations are Against the Gods and Capital Ideas by Peter Bernstein, Manias, Panics, and Crashes by Charles Kindleberger, and Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip Fisher.