NZ Herald 14 January 2006
Q&As: Should man, 53, go with bank and seminar rental recommendation?; Young couple ponder buying share of family farm; Should Mary answer all readers’ letters?
Q&As: Should man, 53, go with bank and seminar rental recommendation?; Young couple ponder buying share of family farm; Should Mary answer all readers’ letters?
Q&As: How well do share funds perform?; Comparison of investment performances.
Q&As: The pros and cons of self employment and income splitting; Comparing shares with property is tricky; How movements in the dollar affect investment in international share funds.
Q&As: How to go about investing your student loan; How to find rating information on finance companies.
Is it dumb to diversify shares or property? Diversification is not all it’s cracked up to be, according to a man who read my last column, which praised the spreading-your-risk idea. “Bill Gates didn’t diverse much, and it didn’t do him much harm,” he writes. “The fact remains that the richest people on the planet have become that way because they haven’t diversified.
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.
Q&As: When does tax on capital gains apply to share investors?; When can share investors deduct newspapers and investment reports?; Are shops allowed to charge more if you use a Visa card?; The role of luck in house price rises.
Q&As: 2 on renting v home ownership — including the psychology of the choice; The professor who set last week’s question gives me a grade, and notes that house prices have fallen lots elsewhere.
The inherent differences between property and share investments. There’s a fundamental difference between investing in shares and property, a reader says in an email. “With a stock there is always the risk of bankruptcy of the entity you invest in, and the investment you make becoming worthless,” he writes.