Protected: The Trader’s View
Vested Interests and Superannuation Advice
We mere mortals here in Wealth & Security Planners have been bemusedly scanning the various reactions to Australian Securities & Investments Commission guidelines for the Trustees of super funds to be able to provide advice to their members. In case you missed it, the guide is set out here. The impetus for the change is…
Protected: What would a Trader do?
Power, Money and Money and Power
As a bemused bystander to the current global financial turmoil (“GFT”, being a close cousin to the more familiar “GFC” or Global Financial Crisis), have you ever paused to consider just what the very big picture may be telling us about the times we live in? Given that this is a very broad musing, it…
If this is what passes for intelligent discussion – i’m going back to kindergarten…
If you are bored enough of your day-to-day, you may have noticed my previous posting which included the text of a note that i sent to the Crikey online newsletter in an attempt to get some sort of intelligent discussion happening in regards to commissions and fees for superannuation. Well, it seems that when you…
Legislating to ban commissions on superannuation
For many years various pressure groups around the country have been trying to have legislation brought in to ban the payment of commissions from superannuation accounts. Pressure has mounted even further as links are drawn between commissions generated and the recent failures of MIS scheme operators Great Southern and Timbercorp, as well as the demise…
Common sense is not so common – Timbercorp/ Great Southern
The demise of Timbercorp and Great Southern has highlighted the difficulties of running an investor-focussed regulatory environment in a capitalist based system. For once, i will be brief. The agricultural projects operated by Timbercorp and Great Southern on behalf of grower-investors are presided over by a “RE”, or Responsible Entity. It is the job of…
How do Financial Advisors assess and apply risk strategies?
Take a deep breath, ’cause this is a deep one. i have set out below a bit of information on one of the core “tools” that is used in the financial planning industry in an attempt to apply some measure of science to the selection of approriate investment assets. It is actually only a superficial…
Bias in action
Having just spent a bit of time setting out the relative aspects of bias that exist in the Financial Planning industry, i thought it relevant to highlight just how prevalent and deeply ingrained this tendency for bias is. Please bear in mind that i am not making a value judgement here – bias will always…
