Dunotter Strategic Wealth

  While moderating the Mary Holm event at the Central Hawkes Bay Readers & Writers book festival this year, the topic of educating children about investing came up.  A lady in the audience said that her family had embarked on a competition to see who would pick the best share portfolio. Each member of the family (parents and the young children) had opened a Sharesies account and invested $20 into it. They had then picked which shares they would like to buy. One of the useful features of these platforms is the ability to purchase "partial shares", so if the price is $10 but you only want to invest five, then you can buy half a share. The idea was to see which portfolio had performed the best by the end of the year. We thought that this was indeed a great way of introducing our children to the world of investing. They have often asked me "so what do you actually do daddy?"  Unlike that of their farming uncle, my work must seem completely intangible. While I am no

  The stock market often appears to be a complex and risky place in which to invest money. The latter is of course correct: there is risk in almost any action, even inaction carries risk of some sort. Therefore a huge industry has been created over the past century, where experts (fund managers) offer to take care of your money and invest it wisely. According to a Boston Consulting Group Study in the asset management industry now manages over $100 trillion dollars. Fund managers operate in a very wide range of disciplines, such as Global Equities, Asian Bonds, Australian Commodities, American Tech, Growth stocks, Cautious Investing and so on. Their primary claim is that they possess the skill and knowledge to "beat the market" over a given time period. So what does "beating the market" actually mean? You hear in the news how the stock markets of the world performed on a certain day. On good news they tend to rise, on unexpected bad news they tend to fall. This perf