Do-it-yourself financial bias
Is there a financial bias in media and commentary towards do-it-yourself strategies? And if there is, is it disclosed or obvious or even apparent?
timing differences
Higher super fund returns
Many super funds have had a reasonably good year these last 12 months. This will likely trigger a barrage of adverts and promotions that boast of this or that return beating this or that benchmark. Higher Super Fund Returns The point of this post though, is to look at super fund returns from a different … Read more
Predicting fantastic investment returns in markets
My tea-leaf prediction…. we will start to see more and more fund managers and super funds start to brag about their investment returns.
Don’t listen to the panic merchants
The world is going to end but you can save yourself by subscribing to… These self-help newsletters, websites and email lists are getting a little bit carried away with themselves.
The Gold price and investment markets
Gold, like diamonds, holds a fascination much greater than its simple financial value. It is malleable, resistant to tarnishing, highly conductive and a fantastic metal to work with (in a previous life i completed a jewellery making course and came to appreciate just how easy gold is as a medium). In some countries, the open … Read more
Long Term Investment and Averaging
Financial planners are fond of using the phrase “long term” when talking about investing. It is a concept based upon an awful lot of research and analysis of markets, investor behaviour and trends. However, the phrase quite rightly gets questioned every time there is a significant fall in markets. A lot of people worry about … Read more
10 Year Super Fund returns – Part II
A few people have read my earlier post on this subject of 10 year super fund returns and wondered just what point i was making… (thanks for the feedback Neil and others!). The post was primarily aimed at showing the average 10 year return of the average super fund (which was not much over 4%pa) and … Read more
A Reminder – Speculating is NOT Investing
What is speculating? What is investing? There are different versions of this but a very good one was put forward by Peter Thornhill this morning in his delivery to those assembled for the current Perpetual update (Perpetual is a major fund manager in the Australian market, with an active, value “style”). Peter’s delivery was focussing … Read more
What The…? Return to your homes folks, nothing to see here.
This is just a quick note to comment on the wildly erratic gyrations on the US stockmarket overnight. It seems that speculation, fear and quite possibly a few incorrectly processed trades have resulted in the kind of near-meltdown that we have seen in the past – except that this time the actual basis of the … Read more
Be gentle on ‘Industry Funds’ – they know not what they do.
The front page of todays Australian Financial Review (AFR) includes an article titled “Unlisted assets drag down super fund returns”. In it, the returns of ‘Industry Funds’* is suggested as showing falling returns into a recovering market. This is entirely expected, and should not be a reason to argue against the ‘Industry Fund’ attraction to … Read more