Far from me to sit on my porch playing the fiddle, while watching the business district i live in being burned to the ground. That once-magnificent newspaper, the Australian Financial Review, yesterday headlined the changes in the financial industry as some institutions move to drop commissions from their products. All very laudable steps. Follow the…
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…
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…
Australia escapes ‘austerity measures’
Sensational headlines are becoming commonplace in the financial world. Once the preserve of the gossip rags or mass circulation dailys, it seems that drama has become the daily grist of the financial media. We are in strange times indeed. The reason for this note is to consider just how well Australia is positioned right now,…
“Yes Minister” comes to Australia
Monday morning and we sit down to digest the raft of professionally prepared updates from various analysts who have spent the weekend poring over the Federal Government’s announcements on tax simplification. The documents released on the government website are beautifully written. Someone has clearly invested a lot of time and energy distilling some fairly difficult…
Super Guarantee rate increase and financial planner fees
Now it makes a bit more sense… Why had the industry funds been making such a push for banning commissions, to the point where you could argue that their members’ funds were being used to pay for a campaign that didn’t actually improve the position of the members (because their members were already in funds…
Hidden costs in superannuation and investments
Just a quick note today… With the broohah surrounding the government announcements on legislating to remove commissions from superannuation and investment accounts there are all sorts of comments being made on the likely impacts – some more informed than others. Feedback in a number of online forums suggests that many people are happy with the…
Is there ever a level playing field?
So you come to work, looking forward to a day doing the job you love, and thinking how lucky you are to deal with the people you deal with. For some reason you glance at the front page of the financial papers and these are the headlines glaring back at you. It wouldn’t hurt as…
Another day, another rate rise…
The Reserve Bank Governor, Glenn Stevens, today released a media statement to confirm a 0.25% rate rise to 4.25%. It will be interesting to see if we end up with the hoopla on banks passing on this rate rise in full or part or more as we did with the last one and the Westpac…
Indexation of UK Pensions rejection by European Court of Human Rights
There’s something odd about this announcement being made late on 16 March; the day before St Patrick’s Day. But no, the President of the European Court of Human Rights is not from Ireland (although being French he may sympathise). For those not aware, some background. Those folk in Australia who are entitled to receive and…
