The rally has, after four long and lean years, sent superannuation balances back past their pre-GFC peaks, and stockbroking firms scrambling to fill empty desks. The ASX200 has been on the rise since mid-November. CommSec's Craig James has already revised up his end-of-year forecasts for the Australian sharemarket to close at 5300. He had previously estimated an end-of-year close of 4900 to 5000 points. "It does appear on current developments that we were too pessimistic, swamped by a 'perfect storm' of bad news,” Mr James says. Bank of America Merrill Lynch chief executive and country head Craig Drummond believes the turning point in the cycle was in late July when European Central Bank president Mario Draghi made his famous "whatever it takes' speech in relation to Europe.

"Those comments said to investors there isn't a lot of downside in taking on risk. Prior to that point there was massive uncertainty about what the ECB would do and whether they would provide the liquidity," he says. All of the big mining, banking and retail stocks have surged in Friday trade, with the market up 11 out of the past 12 days. Woolworths, which started the year at $29.33 per share, hit $31.39 in trading today. BHP Billiton touched $37.87 per share this afternoon, up from $36.25 in mid-January. Rio Tinto was up 1.48 per cent, or 98 cents, at $67.34 in morning trade. ‘We’re seeing iron ore prices moving up once again so that’s been a positive for that space,’’ said Julia Lee, equities analyst at Bell Direct. ‘‘The big four banks are also moving higher - we’re seeing a gain of about 0.3 to 0.6 per cent.

The banks have performed strongly in the past three weeks. Commonwealth Bank has risen $3.50 per share in a little over two weeks, from $61.37 to $64.87 this afternoon, catapulting the bank's market capitalisation above $100 billion. Saturday's BusinessDay canvasses the views of chief executive and country head of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Craig Drummond, Perpetual's head of equities, Matt Williams, Tyndall's head of equities, Bob Munster, Deutsche Bank's Scott Mailer and Craig James at CommSec for their views on the recent surge in share prices. IG Markets market strategist Evan Lucas said the market was defying overseas leads. "We're seeing the banks push up further. NAB jumped up pretty high," Mr Lucas said. "They've had a stellar run. They've been the outperformer of the market and they've been leading the way up."

In the past quarter, the ASX 200 has risen 12 per cent in lockstep with the surge in global equities markets. In the US Wall Street is 5 per cent off an all-time high and in Europe equity markets have similarly risen as the "rotation" from bonds to equities gathers steam. Price to earnings ratios have jumped from 10.6 a year ago to 13.7 and volumes going through the market have almost doubled. Caan Krsztew-Ivanow, a senior consultant in banking and financial services recruitment at Randstad, says the change in sentiment has been palpaple. ''The last eight months of the year were dead for the stockbroking industry.'' Mr Krsztew-Ivanow said. ''In the past two weeks, we've pretty much had every major firm in the country we deal with come to us and say 'get ready, we're hiring'. I can see March being very good for the industry.''

It is in sharp contrast to nine months ago when a number of brokers were struggling to survive as business dried up, corporate activity flatlined and margins continued to come under attack.