The folly of predicting market downturns
I’ll start this article with a prediction. At some point in the future, the sharemarket will go down. It might go down in a big way. Phew! I...
Category: Investing
When taking too little risk is risky
People sometimes tell me that they don’t want to take any risks with their investments. I have to tell them that all investments have risks. Even those supposedly...
Three ways to invest in financial assets in New Zealand
The purpose of this article isn’t to provide advice about whether financial assets are suitable for you, but to explain some ways you can invest in financial assets...
Where are people getting advice about direct property and what sort of advice are they receiving?
On May 24 I wrote my first “tweetstorm” (follow me on Twitter here). I made a number of observations about the FMA’s recent snapshot of NZ’s 1,800 Authorised Financial...
Free financial advice for professional trustees
Some blunt advice for trustees of trusts with funds available to invest. You can probably save a lot of money in fees once you realise that investing isn’t that hard, and low-fee, index-based funds can do most of the heavy-lifting for you.
The difference between a financial adviser and an investment manager
If the first question you ask a financial adviser is “where do you get your research from?”, it probably means you’re confusing the roles of financial advisers and investment managers. It’s an easy distinction to overlook – many financial advisers think they’re investment managers, too.
Contracts for Difference (CFDs) and counterparty risk
I talk briefly about CFDs or “contracts for difference” (moral of the story: steer clear!), and use CFDs to illustrate something called counterparty risk. Generally speaking, the counterparty risk with a CFD is high, and the counterparty risk with a reputable managed investment scheme is low.
Should I use my KiwiSaver funds to buy a house?
The NZ news media is on a run with terrible personal finance articles. There was the recent suggestion you need $101k by age 30 to have a comfortable...
Guaranteed income funds can’t offer you certainty
I was really pleased to see Lifetime Retirement Income develop a “guaranteed income” investment product in 2016. This was followed by Simplicity’s Guaranteed Income Fund the following year, which is available...
How to get better-than-market returns
For most people, I recommend investing in low-cost, index-based managed funds. The principle is that you shouldn’t focus on beating the market – you should just make sure...
