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History shows that investment markets rise over time - small wobbles are buying opportunities

For the last six weeks, we have seen headlines in the business pages about the share markets around the world going down, then going up the next day, followed by a fall the following day. This is normal - the reason that the media is following these movements at the moment, is because of the size of the movements. Like the natural world, markets follow cycles. For the last two years, along with most of your fund managers we have been anticipating a correction in the investment markets.  It fee...

Heineken Worlds Apart - Video

This 4:25 video can be confronting, but I thought it would be worth sharing with our readers. Heineken presents ‘Worlds Apart’ An Experiment. Can two strangers with opposing views prove that there’s more that unites than divides us? ...

Southern Cross Healthcare removes benefits from policy holders

Many New Zealanders have their Medical/Health insurance cover through Southern Cross Healthcare. Southern Cross Health Society (a charitable trust) has been around since 1961 and has traditionally provided Health Insurance through the workplace.  ...

Sale of AMP Life Insurance and Wealth Business

On the 25th October 2018, AMP announced that (subject to regulatory approvals), the business that had been the cornerstone of financial services in Australia and New Zealand for many years would exist no longer. ...

Busting Cancer Myths - [videos]

  There are a lot of myths around Cancer - and what happens with cancer.  These short videos made in Canada look at some the of the common myths circulated about what causes cancer: Cancer Mythbusters: Antiperspirant and breast cancer ...

Keep calm and carry on

I receive a number of email newsletters each day, but I thought this one was particularly useful, so have replicated it below.  It is from Fortune magazine in their Cyber Saturday Edition: ...

Protect your online self

Following on from the project that we carried out in 2016 with our membership clients, it is important to continually be aware of the risks of your online self. The following checklist is from CERT NZ - the Government agency who provide you with up-to-date actionable advice on current threats and vulnerabilities.  We subscribe to their newsletter of alerts - which you can do here. ...

Recent news on various scams in New Zealand

Although the development of the internet, email, smart phones, tablets and computers has brought many advantages, it has also created an entirely new criminal industry. The types and breadth of technological related scams is continually increasing and evolving.  Every week, we read information about a new scam and every now and then hear of someone that we know who has unwittingly fallen prey to these scammers. There are also scam phone calls - that are insistent - That included a current wave...

Insurers refusing new insurance in certain locations

A client of ours in Wellington has been/is going through the exhausting and stressful process of claiming for the damage caused to his house by the Kaikoura earthquakes in November 2016. The latest event is that he wanted to make sure that his heritage home was properly insured, and wanted to increase the cover, in the event of any other event. ...

The shared driveway insurance catch you need to know about

As someone who has lived down the end of a shared driveway for over 22 years, this article in the NZ Herald caught my attention. I have confirmed the situation with our Fire and General insurance broker, and they said:   All non EQC cover natural disaster claims have an excess of $5000. Type of items involved would be drives , tennis courts , paths etc. Anything that falls outside the EQC definitions basically.  The excess is per policyholder. Each insurer is only responsible for their porti...

House, car, contents insurance - important changes and issues you need to know about

Fire and General insurance (that is insurance on houses, contents, vehicles, boats, professional indemnity, public liability insurance) is something that we don't know a lot about here.  We can answer any question that you have about insurance on you as a person (life, trauma, income protection, mortgage repayment, health insurance etc), but not about fire and general insurance - it is a separate industry to the life insurance industry. We know about our own experience and our clients experien...

Be very careful and cautious about what you get in the mail please

A friend of ours (lets call him Joshua) unwittingly got caught up in a fraudulent 'prize winning' scheme recently and lost $7,000.  He gave the scammers his passport details and bank account details, and they started to harrass him by phone for more money and got angry when they asked for a receipt for the previous money.  Fortunately, we were able to help Joshua to understand that this was a scam before he sent any more money. ...

Is it worth it?

I have mentioned 'The Sketch Guy', Carl Richards before, he does a column in The New York Times and has some great ideas for us to share with you.  This is the latest idea and it resonated with me. As Carl says: Here’s a super loaded question: Is it worth it? We ask this question a lot when it comes to how we spend money, and I think it’s incredibly important to understand what we value. We can start by ignoring what everyone else thinks and focusing on what we decide is worth it. What do...

When the boss sells out

There are many things that can have an impact on the value of a share investment - from the industry outlook, the local and global environment, to a consideration of who the Directors and Executive Management of the business are and what their business track records are. As well as the obvious issues, there are other things that will have an impact on the valuation and desirability of investing in a company from time to time. One of these factors was well profiled in the NZ Herald article by Ta...

A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow (Kate Raworth | TED2018)

This is a TED talk that struck a chord with me.  It is a British Economist talking about whether everything needs to keep growing forever - and pointing out that in nature things have a limit to their growth - then they explode or die. She has developed her 'doughnut' theory, which makes a lot of sense. It is 15.54 minutes and I strongly recommend that you find the time to watch it - it is definitely food for thought, given how many problems we have in the Western world as a result of the focu...

Governance issues with listed companies

To get your money working for you (instead of you continuing to work until you die to have enough money to live off), a portion of your investment portfolio needs to be invested in shares (or equities). Owing shares of a company means that you are an owner.  You participate in the success of the company (by getting income streams as dividends and by increases in the value of the company – which is reflected in the increased value of your share). However, you also participate in the failure o...

How much would you pay to keep using Google?

My morning newsletter from The Economist is a valuable part of my day - even when I am too busy to read all the other newsletters, I save the Economist newsletters to check when I have time. The newsletter has between 3 and 5 summaries of articles, and you can get a limited free subscription.  Often the summary gives enough detail to understand what is happening, but sometimes, the information in the summary or the picture is just too enticing, and I have to pursue the information.  For your ...

Berkshire Hathaway AGM: Warren Buffett shares investing insights

Warren Buffet is pretty much the most successful investor ever, he is a legend and 42,000 people went to the AGM of his company (that he owns with Charlie Munger, they are both in their late 80’s now) this year.  This is an excellent video to give you a feel for the long term impact of investing in shares. Berkshire Hathaway AGM: Warren Buffett shares investing insights | The Economic Times Video | ET Now https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/berkshire-hathaway-agm-warr...

Inflation - and why you shouldn't put your money in a savings account

Every now and then I come across an article that is so important, that I just have to share it with you. Susan Edmunds wrote this article in Stuff - and I thought it the nail on the head. So this blog post is really just sharing it with you! Here's why you shouldn't put your money in a savings account ...

Opening an investment for your children or grandchildren

Over the years, we have set up quite a lot of diversified investment accounts for our clients for their children and grandchildren. Time is a powerful ally of the investor – with us seeing more and more Grandparents keen to invest on behalf of their Grandchildren.  As we know investing money for a child’s future can last well beyond birthdays and Christmases. How does time work?  The best example is this graph of $10,000 invested since 1January 1992 until the end of 2017 - as you can see,...

Residential investment property and taxation issues

The taxation environment for residential property in New Zealand has changed quite a bit in the last five years and is likely to continue to change. ...

Managing your rental property

While it may seem easy to ‘buy a property’ and watch it go up in value, as you have your own home and know how that works, and at some time you have probably rented a property, it isn’t always plain sailing. Not all tenants are ‘dream tenants’ and there are a lot of potential issues relating to your rights as a landlord (not the least being the meth epidemic in New Zealand.) ...

The challenges of investing in residential rental property

Over the last few months we have had far more than usual queries from our clients about whether they should invest in residential rental property. This has come about as people see prices of properties soaring throughout the country, and as people own their own home, the thinking is ‘it can’t be that hard, you just buy a property and sit back as the prices go up and you make money’. We totally understand this perception, so thought it was a good time to update you on the pitfalls of inves...

The Financial Services Royal Commission in Australia

April 2018 saw a number of shocking revelations of the behaviour of the four main Australian Banks and AMP.  All of these companies operate in New Zealand (ANZ, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASB), National Australia Bank (BNZ), Westpac and AMP).  These have kept coming throughout May, with more information on various questionable practices from the big four. The commission was established in 2017 after years of pressure from whistleblowers, consumer groups, the Greens, Labour and some Natio...

What does the Australian Financial Services Royal Commission mean for New Zealand?

The four main Australian banks and AMP are significant providers of financial services in New Zealand.  They have the vertically integrated organisations that exist in Australia (selling their own products and clipping the ticket at each stage).  They also have incentive programmes for employees to sell products and KPI’s for them to retain their jobs based on the products and services sold. The Financial Markets Authority (the New Zealand regulator) and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand have...