Risk and Return are two aspects of investment that are most often discussed separately, as if it were possible to have one without the other. This is especially true in the post-Global Financial Crisis (“GFC”) world, where the range of potential outcomes can be quite large. The GFC and its aftermath have created big huge…
Australia’s cash interest rates are currently at record low levels. If your cash account earns that interest rate of 2.5% then you are probably just keeping ahead of official inflation rates – currently noted as 2.4%. If you are paying tax then that means your purchasing power is slowly being eroded. In other words, the…
Predicting interest rates is no different to any other form of financial market prediction – it’s only a guess and has a very high chance of being wrong. There are just so many inputs into the interest rate outcome. Some people may be asking themselves whether Australian interest rates will rise? Here are some very…
How much money do i need to retire? This is one of the more common financial planning questions. However, the answer requires some digging into ideas and concepts that many people haven’t really sat down to think about before. A good starting point ti to look at the amount of income you need to live…
Financial Planning Realities This note is a broad look at financial planning fees and costs in Australia. It is necessary to put this all into the “public domain” as there seems to be a massive disconnect between what that financial planning industry/community IS versus what it is perceived/stated to be by various players. This leads to a…
Word from the street is that HSBC is “near $1.9 billion settlment over money laundering”. The US government is cracking down on money laundering generally, and HSBC is a high-profile target after some subsidiaries revealed less-than-appropriate dealings. Standard Chartered “agrees to settle Iran Money Transfer Claims” is the headline of a New York Times article that…
It’s Friday, and that means a cup of tea and a ponder of the mix of urgent, important, frivilous and ironic perspectives available to anyone interested in the Australian sharemarket. Musing on share market strategies It is not possible to predict markets. This reminder should be tattoo’d on the fingers of every person who elects to actively…
Property investment funds have had a stellar year… Just a quick ponder today, with a focus on the managed property investment scene. The area of interest is specifically the rates of returns currently showing for property investors in the major managed investments. This post has been prompted by recent advertisements which start with the 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…
Welcome to 2013, the year of the snake! Already a few weeks old, 2013 has all the makings of a very good year. For a start, the political systems of the three major economic global power blocs (Europe, USA and China) have managed to wriggle their way through some fairly tricky turf and start the…
