19 December 2009
People tend to choose their advisors poorly, mainly because they consider them to be 'experts'. Unfortunately, experts tend to be constrained by their own feelings of self-importance. Tests have found that the higher the qualification and experience a person has, the less accurate their forecasts tend to be.
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28 Nov 2009: Perhaps the most important assignment in a university course I teach on financial literacy has little to do with finance. Worried that the course might send the message “the more money you have the better”, I ask the students to think about how money and happiness are related.... more
21 Nov 2009: Investments tend to go through three phases during a bull run. The first is when the smart money and the contrarian investments get into a particular sector or type of asset and prices start to creep upwards. ... more
14 Nov 2009: The recent fuss over food price rises shows how little feel many New Zealanders have for the power of compounding numbers. And that lack of knowledge could harm them when borrowing and investing.... more
7 Nov 2009: I have taken to walking the three kilometres or so from my home to my office in central Auckland. It is good exercise and gives me valuable distraction- free thinking time. ... more
10 Oct 2009: Australia has become the first country to try turning the liquidity taps off. After bringing the official interest rate down to the lowest in 49 years, the Reserve Bank of Australia hiked it last week by a quarter of a percent to 3.25% and has hinted strongly that further rises are likely (some say the next rise could be as early as Melbourne Cup day next month). ... more
3 Oct 2009: One of the findings in a recent survey caught my eye. Only 12 per cent of New Zealanders surveyed said the value of their financial investments had grown in the previous six months, with 42 per cent saying the value was unchanged and 46 per cent saying it had fallen.... more
26 Sep 2009: Although share markets have recovered strongly in the past six months, they mostly are still lower than they were a year ago and up to a third below their level of just two years ago.... more
