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The ten largest S&P Companies over the last 40 years

1985 was the first year that I started working in the investment industry.  I was working in a role that was periphery to financial planning and investment management at that time, and in 1987 I started working in a role that got me much closer to the real action.This table above appealed to me as it traced the rise and fall of various companies, showing the trends in society over time.  If you blow the image up on your screen, or download it, you can see that there are fine lines conn...

A lot has happened in the last 5 years. Not just tariffs

Please note that the table above was to the end of April (the markets have since rebounded  higher)For a long time (from the fall of the Berlin Wall until recently) the world was in a historically stable period.  But in the last five years and in the last six months in particular, we have seen significant change in the world.The graph above is from an excellent webinar run by one of our fund managers - Alphinity.  We use the Alphinity Sustainable Share Fund in our clients portfoli...

Investment Research Providers

As part of our annual fund managers project in 2024, Peter and Paul did an audit of the research reports on our fund managers from our research providers - Morningstar, Lonsec and any others that were available to us.  The goal was to see if there was anything we didn't know. We didn't find things about the fund managers that we didn't know, but we did find out that the Australian based fund managers no longer carried out comprehensive research on New Zealand fund managers.The investme...

Mindful Money Ethical Financial Adviser of the Year Award - Winner

This is the fifth year that Mindful Money have run the Ethical Financial Adviser of the Year Award. For the first four years, this award focused on the whole business - looking at what all the advisers in the business did around ethical investing.We didn't enter for the first two years, but were sponsors of the awards.  In the third and fourth year we entered and were winners.For the fifth year, Mindful Money changed things up and asked for nominations of individual people to enter the awar...

Judging the Mindful Money Awards

Each year the charity Mindful Money runs awards to recognise fund managers, advisers and investors in the Ethical Investment arena.  We have entered the awards since 2023 and have won the Ethical Financial Adviser of the Year Award in 2023 and 2024.In addition, Carey has participated in the process as a Judge of the awards (the only adviser to do this).  She has judged in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 (obviously not in the Ethical Financial Adviser category).The process involves reviewing ...

U3A Cambridge

U3A - University of the Third Age is a concept that began in France, where retired people went to Universities to listen to lectures.  It expanded into the UK and evolved into a world wide programme where people attend lectures and study groups in their community.In April 2022 Carey was musing about setting up a U3A in Cambridge and met Lyndall Hermitage who had recently moved to Cambridge and had been very active in U3A study groups in her previous location.  Together with a Cambridge...

Changes to KiwiSaver from May 22 Budget

Since it's launch on July 1st 2007 KiwiSaver has become an integral part of Kiwi's financial planning and saving and of the investment industry and culture in New Zealand.It has been a number of years (fortunately) since there have been changes to KiwiSaver, the last changes being the elimination of fee subsidies and the halving of the Member Tax Credit (now called Government Tax Credit) from $1,042 to $521 a year and the abolishing of the $1,000 kick start.  There have been other various c...

Consumer Survey on the opinions of the New Zealand public about ethical investing

We first became aware that Kiwi's were interested in ethical investing in 1997, when one of our first clients asked us about making investments that are going to be good for people and the world.  Over the years, the world of ethical investing has changed significantly.The Responsible Investment Association of Australasia (RIAA) and Mindful Money have carried out a survey of consumers to see what their views are in relation to ethical investing.  Since at least 2020 - there has been a ...

Property Rates - some things you might not know about

Owning a property in New Zealand means that you are required to pay Property Rates to your local Council.  Over the last five or so years, the rates charges have increased significantly (along with property insurance costs) and are a substantial part of our clients outgoings.Each local authority sets the rates for their region based on the future expenditure required.  And as things have become more expensive, the rates seem to fund less and less things (and often controversial items d...

Offsetting and Avoiding Carbon Emissions - Cookstoves

At Moneyworks, we have been offsetting all our Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon emissions since the financial year ending 31/03/2023.  During 2025 we changed our provider and moved from purchasing a dedicated lot of native forest in New Zealand to a programme where native trees are planted in the Waikato (and we can participate in the planting). Because our emissions are so small, at the moment the options available to us are limited.But for a number of years, we have been interested in the way that...

Trump Turmoil and your Financial Planning

It has been a turbulent start to 2025 - since the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th President of the USA, it has been like watching a TV Series, where you don't know what is going to happen from episode (day) to episode (day).The US markets eventually worked out that a. Trump doesn't care about the markets any longer (as we have previously communicated, he considered the markets his key performance indicator in his first term) https://fortune.com/2025/03/25/morgan-stanley-mike-wilson...

Tariffs - the most BEAUTIFUL word in the English language

We could write a lot about tariffs and the fact that the Trump administration (and his adviser Peter Navarro) have a different understanding about the impact of tariffs than pretty much all other economists and people who deal with these kinds of things.  But that would be boring, as you will have heard a lot of those discussions already.  To understand how Peter Navarro sees things, check out this podcast by the New York Times Daily - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/podcasts/t...

Benedict Lumberjack and rainforests

'Make My Money Matter' is a British charitable organisation that is raising the profile of issues that fall under the label of 'ethical investing'.  They have the ability to get famous actors to do short skits highlighting the issue. - see the video links below this blog post.The first one that we showed you was Olivia Colman as 'Oblivia Coalmine' - see the video here https://makemymoneymatter.co.uk/oblivian/ or on the link belowThe latest video is Benedict Cumberbatch putting the...

Learning about climate related financial disclosures

New Zealand is a leader in the world in requiring large financial institutions, companies and fund managers to make climate financial disclosures. [Although the current Government is consulting on changing this, proposing higher thresholds of assets and revenues for disclosure, but we will still be known as the 'first'].While the climate related financial disclosure documents aren't really a key metric at this stage in how we assess our fund managers, Carey attended a one day course in early Dec...

How do do a reverse image search to block out fraudsters

Scammers and fraudsters are prolific these days - they use AI and filters to present themselves as someone else - having stolen that person's identity.Here is a quick and easy way to check that the person that you are communicating with is actually who they say they are - go ahead and test it on a friend or a foe - find their photo on line, take a screenshot and test it - click on the video below....

Trump, Tariffs, Nobel Peace Prize

On 19th February 2025, we attended our annual Portfolio Construction Summit.  This is our one day 'get the year off to a hiss and roar' conference, where there are fantastic speakers talking about what is happening in the world and more detailed information on portfolio construction.Pre-covid, we used to travel to Sydney for this conference and an associated Finology conference, but for the last 4 years, we have watched this online (a long day from 10am until 8pm, but worth it!)There were t...

Podcasts to help understand the investment environment

The world is changing continually and investments and investment strategies need to adapt to these changes.  With the significant change in US politics as the result of the 2024 US election and the rapid evolution of AI, in many areas, it is important that investors are continually updated on what is happening in the world and how this might affect investments.Your fund managers are continually monitoring, questioning and learning.  But many of our clients also want to understand more ...

Unpacking the Nasdaq Composite

The Nasdaq Composite is one of the most recognised names in the investment world, often making headlines alongside the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500. But what exactly is the Nasdaq Composite, and how does it work for retail investors like us here in Aotearoa?Generally, the Nasdaq is used as short-hand to see what the technology sector is doing.  We monitor the DJIA (See January newsletter), the S&P 500 (See February Newsletter) and the Nasdaq each day to get a feel for wh...

The new Scam 'Stealing Unlocked Smartphones'

For many years now, we have all known to have a PIN to lock our smartphones so that the data (and our money) doesn't get stolen.  With modern phones, there are biometric protections - where you use your fingerprint or your facial image to lock and unlock the phone.Quite safe right!  Well yes, unless you are standing in a public place where someone can whiz past on an electric bike or scooter, snatch the phone out of your hands while you are using it, then quickly change your passwords,...

CyberSecurity from CertNZ - Robust Routers

Your router (the thing that sends you your wifi) is a potentially easy way for hackers and bots to get into your systems.  Everything from your computers, to your TV to your garage doors - if they are linked to your wifi.The information below was from cert.nz (the NZ Government cybersecurity organisation).  We strongly recommend that you skim read this and maybe at the very least, look at your password and logon details.That little box blinking away in the corner is not just your gatew...

S&P 500 index - the key indicator of market moves

Last month we wrote an article about the Dow Jones Index - the DJIA and why it isn't a reliable measure of what might be happening with your investments.  Although it has been operating since the 1800's, it only reflects 30 stocks and is 'share price weighted',  which can provide some distortions to the picture of how investments ar working.This month we are following up with some information on the more reliable S&P 500 which is the more common index that professional investors (a...

Sustainable investing snippets - thanks to Nanuk New World

In 2024 we carried out an audit of all the information that we receive from our fund managers, grading it from 'don't bother, not worth it', to 'this is fantastic, everyone has to consume this when it arrives'.One of the communications in the 'this is fantastic' category is the monthly report that we receive from Nanuk New World Fund.  This fund is in the majority of our clients portfolio's.  Nanuk invests through nine broad themes of environmental sustainability and resource efficienc...

Moneyworks 2024 Christmas Function - Puzzle Solving

A key part of our work as financial planners and ethical investments advisers is puzzle solving.  We all really enjoy solving puzzles like - how much do our clients need to have a financially comfortable retirement?  Which are the most suitable investment managers for our clients and why?  What is likely to happen to the investment environment in the short and long term?So, now that we only have three of us (plus our robot Millie who doesn't really have a good enough personality t...

Scams are big business now

In February 2025, The Economist is starting a new podcast series about a global scam that managed to scam $47 million US from the CEO of a midwest American Bank.  It requires a subscription (which we will get), but the concerning thing is that the producer has stated that scams are now a bigger international business than the drug trade.  In response to that and to our clients requests, we will start providing you with more information on scams - it is the project in our annual review ...

FIF - Overseas Income Tax Alert

Are you up-to-date with your FIF (Overseas Tax) obligations?A recent article in the financial media highlighted the low compliance rate with the Foreign Investment Fund (FIF) rules, with a tax consultant suggesting that Inland Revenue (IRD) will likely catch up with those not declaring their FIF income.The article points out the surprisingly low number of people who declared FIF income in recent years, suggesting a significant degree of non-compliance.What is FIF and why is it important?In essen...