It’s easy these days to turn on the news or the radio and hear bad news after bad news. This extends to the economy too.

Everywhere we turn, there is a pundit screaming how fragile […..]

There is always so much news on the wild swings of the markets.

Anyone who invests in stocks for the short term is taking on a huge amount of risk by betting on positive short term performance. But as we know […..]

As many of my readers already know, the impact of fees on your investments is a critical determinant in how well your investment funds will perform.

Low cost funds are far more likely to exceed the in the hand returns of higher cost funds. The research comparing low cost to high cost funds is very clear on this matter.

Stuff media recently published an article that suggests […..]

Many investors over the last year have panicked about downward heading markets and have made sub optimal decisions.

Some have been so worried about the state of the economy that they have […..]

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) is the country’s government agency responsible for ensuring financial services and markets adhere to the law.

Their vision is to promote and facilitate the development of fair, efficient and transparent financial markets.

It is no real surprise then, that in […..]

Over the past few years I imagine I have written over 300 blog articles. Many of them on investing. But one subject I haven’t really touched on is responsible investing.

It’s a prickly subject. Mainly because […..]

When I express confidence about the stock markets ability to produce returns over the long term, I inevitably receive a response along the lines of “what about Japan?”

What they are meaning by this is that Japan has not […..]

Every so often I see or hear someone asking what the secret is to getting ahead.

“What’s the secret sauce”?

“What am I missing”?

What they are really asking is […..]

When it comes to investing, averages can be dangerous things.

We have discussed before how important the sequence of your returns are. Experience high returns early in your investing when you […..]

In what is one of the great ironies of stock investing, hordes of investors are selling their stocks and delaying buying more.

As stocks become cheaper and better value, people buy less. What gives?

There is […..]

often see people asking what is the best place for my money to combat inflation.

The answers range widely but most commonly you will see property, index funds, individual stocks, type of stock, gold and bitcoin all thrown in the mix somewhere.

What is never […..]

One of the most vivid memories from when I had my excruciating back and leg pain from a slipped disc was how long the days were. The pain was 24/7.

Same experience when our […..]

Stock market corrections can cause a lot of anxiety, and subsequently some pretty poor, emotionally charged, spur of the moment investing decisions.

This performance chasing is what often leads to […..]

Nothing new today, but I have gathered a collection of investing articles I wrote during Covid 2020 and the same applies now really. With a lot of people asking the same questions I thought it would be a good time to refresh our minds of some important investment lessons […..]

When it comes to investing in stocks, long term performance is the important measure. Since it is a long term investment, the best measure is long term results. Not 1, 2 or 5 year results.

Yet, most active fund managers are […..]

Investors love to find reasons for why their stocks have gone up and down. Reasons are what help us make sense of our investment returns and help us to feel in control. For it is all a bit scary without control.

The truth of that matter is […..]

There is an often repeated story in investment media about how bad rising interest rate environments are for bonds. “When interest rates increase, bond prices fall”

Sayings like this cause […..]

Index funds, despite the research showing how the vast majority outperform active Investors, are still not as popular as they probably should be. About half of American investments are passively invested. I would suggest […..]

The title to this post may seem obvious. But looking at the actions of some people at the moment, it is far from obvious.

I wrote an article a while back about why I’m not concerned about stock market volatility or drawdowns. Yet people […..]

I’ve said it time and time again, and I will say it again. Stop wasting your time on small impact decisions.

Instead […..]

It has been talked about endlessly that low cost index funds outperform about three quarters of actively managed funds over the long term.

The reason being, you guessed it, because of […..]

Sometimes I can go many months without checking my investment accounts. Why worry about money that is not needed for many years?

A lot of commentary now is from people worried about their stocks losing value and crashing. Yet I remain […..]

When the stock market has a bad day or week, say down 5%, it is common to hear people saying “buy the dip”.

I love my kiwi onion dip as much as the next person, but I […..]

Investment fees are a big deal.

You may be keen to go with active investment provider aiming to beat the market index. You could be thinking “so what if they charge 2%? I’d be charged 0.5% if I went with a passive index investment provider. 1.5% difference in fees is nothing.”

I know because […..]

Probably the greatest impact to managing your investment risk is making sure that you have […..]

Recently, Squirrel have joined the ever growing list of InvestNow funds on offer. Squirrel offer services in mortgage broking, and peer to peer lending and borrowing.

Anyone who invests is obviously a lender and that is the aspect I am interested in here. The fund on offer is called the monthly income fund and invests in […..]

There are no shortage of articles and books on how to invest, or information on different investments.

All that is well and good, and I have even written some of these articles myself, but many of you may have noticed that the bulk of my writing are about human behaviour.

I strongly believe the biggest […..]

Some of the best performing investors are those who are not that smart.

I have found many intelligent people to […..]

Stock markets around the world are highly priced relative to earnings. Some may even say we are in a bubble.

The problem with this thinking is that there have been […..]

So you’ve come here looking for the secret sauce. How to avoid the next bear market.

I’ve been investing for a while now and have been a voracious reader. After years of trial and error and learning from others I’ve finally stumbled on […..]

I think it is extremely wise to cautiously fear the stockmarket.

The fear shouldn’t be so crippling that you are scared to invest at all. Nor should it be […..]

As soon as people I meet find out I’m a financial adviser, often I am asked how I think the markets are going or how a particular stock may be a good buy or overheated.

My response is […..]

I often have someone ask me what I think of a certain stock or certain industry because of people’s future optimism.

Common examples are the […..]

Sometimes I feel like a broken record, but people do and say things like a broken record that make me feel like I need to keep pushing the point. In this instance I am talking about seeking the best investment returns.

Too many people are spending untold hours trying to select the ‘perfect’ funds. Looking for the next big thing or trend so they can achieve great returns. Yet, the same person will often be wasting a lot of money unnecessarily on their budget. If some people spent as much time on their spending as they do […..]

With no mucking about here are my top 5 stock picks for 2021 […..]

Up until recently, we have been a bit limited to where we can invest our KiwiSaver money, especially if you believe in low cost index funds as I do. Simplicity and Superlife are the two main ones for most seeking low cost, passive investments. Simplicity tends to be lowest cost, albeit with a limited range of funds. Superlife slightly higher cost, but a far greater selection of funds to choose from.

Recently, InvestNow joined the KiwiSaver fray offering even more competition for low cost KiwiSaver investments, in much the same manner as […..]

A lot of investments sound great on the surface, but the more you dig the more you find out about that investment that could derail your investment.

Complex investments are the epitome of this type of behaviour. They are often wrapped in […..]

There are many things in life that we want to try but we are afraid to. We will make all kinds of excuses as to why it can’t be done. Or we analyse and analyse until we can’t analyse no more and we have experienced information overload or analysis by analysis.

This is a situation I see from many new investors. They know that […..]

What can you do for minimal effort, time and knowledge better than most people with far more effort, time and knowledge? Not a lot.

Most things in life […..]

Some time ago, I wrote an article about why the fee structure is not suitable for Sharesies customers.

It is very clear from the numbers that Sharesies has a lot of beginner investors. They have about $500 million under management and 166,000 […..]

Our minds have strange ways of tricking us with numbers, and this is never truer than when it comes to investment fees over the long term.

I’ve always been good at math, but I didn’t always realise [….]

It’s funny the difference a few months can make. Previously when browsing personal finance sites such as reddit, the common advice was bullish.

• “Who needs an emergency fund? Put it all in stocks”

• “If you’re buying a house you […..]

I keep hearing the same question repeated. Why aren’t stocks down more? There are at least 40,000 newly unemployed, businesses are struggling, and unemployment and closures are tipped to […..]

Last week I shared an article that showed how dramatically market volatility reduces when investing over long time frames. Have a refresh of that article as we are using the same data here.

From that same data we can have a look at how many periods of negative returns there were […..]

With so many people deviating from their investment plans and making poor investment decisions during downturns, such as getting out of the market or switching from growth to conservative funds, I thought I’d run some

There are a group of people that believe investing in the share market is gambling. This opinion is formed by the fact that companies go bust and markets can drop by 30, 40, 50% or more in any given year. This is all true. It happens.

But good news happens far more frequently than bad news when it comes to the share market, as is evidenced by […..]

Judging by many of the questions I receive, and the posts I see in community forums, investors make much worse decisions in down markets than they do when […..]

A lot of people have been talking about selling their shares recently due to the plummeting market values. Large drops are a part of investing though. You need to be in it for the long term or you may miss out on […..]

People’s collective opinion on what they think is the state of the market is the price. Our opinions are based on the fundamentals of the companies that make up the market. Markets behave rationally, until they don’t […..]

Many of us are too heavily invested in shares, but won’t realise it until it’s too late. We will get scared and panic sell. A common reason for this surprise reaction is our inability to perform basic maths.

A common miscalculation is that if stocks go down 30% then that is fine. They only need to go back up 30% and I’ll be back to break even. This isn’t […..]

Volatility in the sharemarket is at long time highs. A lot of people’s first instincts in such times is to lump sum buy and sell. They are scared that:

They will lose more […..]

I often see new investors chasing returns from their investments, either taking on more risk than comfortable with, or not getting good returns for the level of risk they are taking on.

I think there is too much focus on returns.

How much someone ends up with in their investments account is a combination of two things […..]

Just a short article today to point out the importance of thinking long term when investing. I see many people losing their sh […..]

Recently, the biggest fund managers in New Zealand got together for their fund manager of the year awards night.

I’m not going to tell you who the winners were because who cares about 1-year returns? Honestly […..]

So often I see Sharesies recommended to new investors looking for low cost investing and it is the wrong recommendation.

Or it should at least come with a warning.

Sharesies is not low cost for new investors […..]

Hold on to your hats people, an economic recession is coming. Unemployment will rise. House prices will fall. Stock markets will crash.

The results of an economic recession can be devastating. Especially to those who have yet to experience one. The last one was in 2007-08.

That means there are a whole lot of people under the age of 35 that may have not experienced a recession in their working (earning income) lifetime […..]

Stock index funds are all the rage these days. They occupy about 20% of the global market and this amount is increasing every year. The main driver of the conversion of investors from active to passive stems from the fact that many active funds (after fees) are delivering worse results than passive index funds.[…..]

Index fund investing can offer good results for two reasons. Low costs can save you hundreds of thousands over the long term and index funds tend to perform better than actively managed funds over the long term. Better performance at […..]

Most of the time, index fund investors will invest at regular intervals, such as weekly or monthly. Occasionally though, we may be lucky enough to come across some extra money. This may be from the sale of a house, or maybe you are thinking about starting to invest.

Naturally, this leads to one of the most common investing questions. Should I invest it all at once (lump sum), or spread the contributions out over a longer period of time (dollar cost average)?

For the last two years, the NZ Herald has asked approximately seven investment firms for their stocks predictions for the year ahead. Each firm picks five companies they think will perform the best and the Herald publishes their picks. Here is a link to the 2018 picks.

So, how did they do?

With the rapid rise of smartphones and the internet, we are inundated with information on a daily basis. This is both a blessing and a curse.

Readily accessible information is fantastic to discover new information that will improve our lives. The problem is that we are easily distracted. I am anyway. I’m sure I’m not the only one? Echo, echo, echo.

These distractions take us away from the valuable information we should be paying attention to and […..]

When reviewing our investment results, all may not be as it seems. Is that 7% return, actually 7%? Not if you have left out fees and inflation in your calculations. Two small, but not insignificant considerations that can eat away at […..]

Whether you are a buy and hold investor, or a buy and sell investor you will still be interested in reviewing your stocks. It is not as simple as it first appears.

We will often receive an annual report from our stock broker or online provider of how your stocks have done that year. 5%, 9%, 2%, -5% and so on. So, if our stocks over 10 years have returned 70% in total, that is 7% per annum right? WRONG. […..]

One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute

Markets go up, down and sideways. Why, for how long, and when, is the big mystery. No one knows. It’s easy to say after the fact, but knowing the trigger for market changes beforehand is anyone’s guess. Strategies of trying to time the market are often […..]

If we are picking individual stocks then we must decide whether to pick our own stocks or have an investment manager/adviser pick them on our behalf.

A self-managed portfolio has the benefit of allowing flexibility, in the sense that we get to choose every company we invest in. We also have significant cost savings, due to[…..]

Every investor will get things wrong. Not just once either but frequently. Heck, even full time professional investors consider 60% success rate as very good. This means that there are many professional investors hitting 50% or less. That is just as well as flipping a coin. The key to a good portfolio is […..]

So far in this series we have covered the different terminology used in investing, dispelled some common investing myths, different types of investments, how to approach the sharemarket, how to reduce our exposure to risk, and what impact our own behaviours have on our investments. Now we can discuss the different types of stocks available to invest in […..]

“The Behaviour Gap” is a fantastic book by Carl Richards. The premise is that despite knowing better, people continue to make the same mistakes over and over with their money. It is our emotions that get in the way of […..]

There are some things we can’t control when investing in the sharemarket. We can’t control interest rates, inflation, exchange rates, company bankruptcies, and so on. This is why many stay away from shares. The unknown. This is a shame, because returns from shares over the long term are arguably better than other accessible investments.

How can we reduce the risk of the unknown? […..]

“Theories that are right only 50% of the time are less economical than coin flipping

— George J Stigler

Let’s dive straight into it and briefly explain the 5 main asset classes […..]

Today, we start a 14-part series that will aim to educate investors that don’t know where to begin investing their spare cash. For a new investor, it can be intimidating to invest money. A lot of the intimidation comes simply from […..]