All tagged ETFs
Do you like my dramatic title? Does it make you nervous? Don’t be. This week I was given the ultimate compliment. Someone said, “I like hearing what you have to say, Ruth. You have common sense”. It seems to me that every investment provider is telling me not to panic at the moment. Common sense tells me there is no need to; volatile times come and go, but hearing it so often repeated gives my common-sense approach a run for its money and makes me wonder if I should be concerned?
How is my “Kernel S&P Kensho Moonshots Innovation Fund” performing? In a word. Poorly. It’s down 27% with no signs of stopping its slide. But I can’t complain; the fund manager themselves forewarned me. Now that I’ve invested in this specific fund for almost a year, I thought it an interesting exercise to see if the returns are living up to my high expectations. Hmmm, let’s just say, it’s not quite what I was hoping for.
I’m a giant jumble of competing thoughts as I sit down to write this final blog post of the year. I’m not much into the generic inspirational end of year content that gets pushed out, so instead, I’ll just keep this one real, and it’s a bit of an insight into my life during the first two weeks of December. I’ll try (and fail) to be brief.
This blog post results from a brief yet alarming conversation I had with a 15-year-old who has three years remaining at school before they planned to head off to university. In answer to my question, “how are you going to pay for it,” they quickly replied, “with student loans, because they are interest-free”. It was not my place to comment at the time (although in my head I was screaming to say something), but given I write a blog, I’ve created a space where I can give their response some thought. So, I will.
I received an email recently that brought tears to my eyes if I’m frank. It was from someone who is in despair about not being in a position to own a house in New Zealand. I wanted to create a blog post about it because the struggle that the writer is experiencing is not unique; in the same week, I received several other messages along the same lines.
Well well well, the time has finally come for this long term investor to divest herself of some shares. Say what?! I claim to be a ‘buy and hold’ investor, so what gives? Have I fallen on hard times you ask, or maybe Jonny and I have retired at last? Ah, thankfully, no and unfortunately, no not yet.
This is a blog post about all the investing “What if’s”. Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you bought shares in a company when you first heard about it, but you didn’t do it? And you find yourself years later saying “oh, I NEARLY bought that stock, but I didn’t…” Now you are wondering what even happened to the company share price and what WOULD have happened to your own net worth IF you had actually purchased some?
I’ve long said that there are alternatives to buying rental property and today I wanted to actually give you some decent detail on this. So today I’m going to give you an idea of what investing into KiwiSaver and index funds/ETFs actually looks like a few years down the track. I find with this blog of mine that it’s helpful to share some real numbers instead of just talking hypothetically all the time.
I think this well-worn phrase, “Don’t put money in the share market that you can’t afford to lose”, contributes to our over-reliance on housing as the only way to grow your wealth in New Zealand. That’s a great shame in my mind because people have turned their back on our strong share market. When I hear prominent Kiwi’s in the New Zealand investing space I want them to educate and inform me. I want them to show me that investing in something other than housing is a viable option for growing the wealth of my family over time. I don’t want them to confirm any biases that I might hold about the share market being risky and akin to a casino. Because it’s not. Yet when they repeat the phrase “don’t put money in the share market that you can’t afford to lose”, that’s exactly what they are telling myself and others.
