NZ Herald Q&A Column

The Investor 9 August 2005

One bad apple — New Zealanders are bad at diversifying. Most New Zealand shareholders are frighteningly undiversified. About 24 per cent of share investors own shares in just one company, and another 36 per cent hold shares in two to five companies, according to recent research by the stock exchange, NZX, and sharebrokers ABN AMRO Craigs.

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The Investor 26 July 2005

Keeping financial advisers on their toes — good for the rest of us. A warning to financial advisers: You’d better give good, unbiased advice to your next new client. And the one after that. And the one after that. You never know which one might be a “mystery shopper” working undercover. If you do serve a mystery shopper, they will report on a website whether the advice you gave “is truly in the best interests of the individual client” — something that Joe and Joanne Blow often find hard to judge.

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The Investor 12 July 2005

Complexity of financial products no accident. Confirmation, at last, of what we’ve suspected all along: Providers of financial products may deliberately make them sound complicated.

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