The dividend reinvestment is enabled individually for each share holding. To record a dividend reinvestment, simply click on the dividend that is to be reinvested and then click the ‘Dividend Reinvested’ tick box. Record the date, quantity, and price of the new shares obtained.

Please see the help documentation for more detail on the new dividend reinvestment function.

The Excel sheets contain formulas to calculate totals where appropriate so this will make it really easy to add new rows into the spreadsheets if you need to.

The Excel export files are compatible with the following versions of Microsoft Excel:

• Excel XP, 2003 and 2007 for Windows
• Excel 2004 or 2008 for Mac OS X

Thanks to our beta group customers for the testing and feedback.

We have started on our list of improvements by fixing problems that many of you reported with the ‘remember me’ function. ‘Remember me’ will now work across multiple computers and we have increased the time that ‘remember me’ stays active so that it will still work even if you haven’t accessed Sharesight for a while.

Here are some tips on how to use the ‘remember me’ function:

1. If you don’t want to have to type your email and password each time you access Sharesight, click the ’remember me’ tick-box on the login page. Please note that this will allow anyone who has access to your computer to view your portfolio without a password, so if other people have access to your computer you might not want to use the ‘remember me’ function.

2. When you have finished using Sharesight simply close your browser. Do not click the logout link – see below.

3. If you don’t want to use the ‘remember me’ function anymore, access your Sharesight account and click the ‘logout’ link in the top right corner of the screen. This will clear your ‘remember me’ status on all computers that you have used to access Sharesight.

The Xero Synchronisation feature allows you to connect your portfolio to your Xero account. This allows you to send details of share purchases, sales, and dividends to Xero as draft invoices, which can then approved for inclusion in your financial accounts and used to reconcile against your bank account.

If you have a Xero account, Xero synchronisation can be set up by clicking settings, then ‘Xero Synchronisation’ for the portfolio that you wish to connect. Note that you must first generate a Sharesight Network key from within Xero. Full instructions can be found in the Sharesight help documentation here.

Below is a short video we prepared for Xero customers:

But I do have a few complaints. For a start, the stated aim of the task force is not clear. It has been variously stated as:

• Matching Australia’s productivity by 2025
• Bridging the gap between Australia’s living standards and ours
• Matching average Australian incomes.

Whatever goal we choose, it needs to be precise. How exactly do we plan to measure productivity/living standards/incomes? For example, are we talking pre or post tax incomes? Are different living costs going to be factored in?

And when we talk blithely about closing the gap, let’s not fondly imagine that Australia is going to hang about marking time and waiting for us to catch up! Our target will be a moving feast. Cynics might say that is exactly what the Government wants because if they fail, which I fear they will, no one will be able to actually figure that out.

Why the heck would we want to compare ourselves to Australia anyway? Rodney Hide says it’s because we love beating Australia. How pathetic is that? This is not about envy or beating anyone. NZ is far more likely to prosper if we cooperate with Australia rather than trying to beat them. As our major trading partner, the better Australia does, the better we are likely to do.

Performance measurement experts often warn that a focus on inappropriate targets can lead to perverse outcomes and a focus on beating Australia is a good example of exactly that. If the taskforce focuses on beating Australia rather than on the improved products, services and benefits the Government wants to see delivered to all New Zealanders, my prediction is that it will do more harm than good.

So, we have a new taskforce with an unclear, imprecise, inappropriate target that is focussed on the wrong thing. It couldn’t get worse than that could it? Well unfortunately it can and it does – the target is not relevant either. What is the point of trying to compare our economy based primarily on dairying and forestry with an Australian economy based primarily on mineral wealth?

Maybe we can rely on Labour leader Phil Goff to bring some sanity to proceedings? Don’t hold your breath folks. Phil reckons the whole thing is about privatisation and right wing ideology!

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

The event will feature the following guest speakers:

Morning Session:

• The Hon Bill English on Creating an Ownership Society. Bill is the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Minister of Infrastructure.
• Tim Brown on Preserving Shareholder Value in Difficult Times. Tim specialises in financial structuring at Infratil. He is also a director of Wellington Airport and NZ Bus.

Afternoon Session:

• Oliver Saint on Using Z Scores to Rate Companies. Oliver is a Chartered Accountant and a former merchant and investment banker. He now works from home as an equities fund manager.
• Rodney Dickens on Recessions and Investing in the Share Market. Rodney is Managing Director and Chief Research Officer of Strategic Risk Analysis Limited and has worked in the share broking industry for 12 years as an economist, strategist and head of research.

For members of the public the cost is $20 each for the morning and afternoon sessions or $50 for the full day including lunch. For Further information please visit The NZSA Website

If you are a Sharesight subscriber we have some limited free spaces available at the morning and afternoon sessions, please email contact@sharesight.co.nz before 4pm Wednesday 22 July if you are interested.

If we wanted something we saved for it. The idea that you could borrow and have things now, rather than having to wait, did not feature in our thinking. We didn’t know much about interest and we had no idea about compounding. But we did have this vague, uneasy feeling that if you paid interest you were heading down the wrong path and would be worse off in the long run.

But we didn’t have the benefit of the advice that Yuwa Hedrick-Wong gave us all a couple of days ago. He said:

“The benefit offered to the consumer to acquire a short-term loan anytime and anywhere without any security coverage is not available on any other payment option except the credit card. The importance of the option for a consumer to borrow for short-term needs is more significant today as the global economy is heading into a period of constrained credit.”

(Maybe I should mention that Yuwa Hedrick-Wong is MasterCard’s economic adviser).

I’m getting that vague, uneasy feeling again. It is telling me that we need advice like this like a fish needs roller skates.

What we knew clearly in the good old days was that if you did need to borrow, the bank might not have funds available when you needed them. So relying on borrowed funds was a bad idea. Today we have MasterCard and all those collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps designed to ensure that banks always have the capacity to lend. But I for one am not convinced this is a step in the right direction.

We used to have this outdated belief that if you did borrow money you had to pay it back – no ifs, no buts, no maybes. Today we have revolving credit facilities and interest-only loans so that repayment is no longer necessary. I’m not sure this is a step in the right direction either.

Of course it wasn’t all bad in the good old days. Some of us did save a bit and stock exchanges were set up to allow us to participate fully in the capitalist society. These exchanges were pretty simple – they allowed you to buy and sell shares in companies. Despite this clear, simple mandate we had this irrational fear that somehow these exchanges would morph into giant casinos. Some would say this fear has now been realised which suggests that stock exchanges may not be heading entirely in the right direction either.

I hasten to add however that you can invest in the share market in a way that avoids the casino element, gives you good returns and enables you to ride out the volatility. See Why you should invest in the sharemarket

As well as the stock markets, what if the wonderful new financial instruments that are now available for us to make money were available in the old days? We wouldn’t have understood them, that’s for sure. But we probably would have had this vague, uneasy feeling that they had been developed with little regard for the risks. Risks that are inherent not only the instruments themselves, but also in the mechanisms for trading them.

However if the actions of the current generation are any guide, we would have headed off in the wrong direction. We would have ignored the risks, brushed aside our lack of understanding and gone for these  new financial instruments like rats up a drain pipe.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

But I question almost everything else in this article. Economics was never my strong point however, so maybe that’s why I have a few questions.

1. Is diversification the great free lunch of finance?
   
   See my thoughts on this.
2. Is it really true that over the long term, investment in NZ assets would have underperformed diversified international investment?
   
   As Chris himself admits, this has certainly not been true over the last 5 years and I doubt that it has been over the last 50 years either.
3. Are small countries unusually vulnerable to country-specific shock?
   
   The country specific shocks of the last year or so have generally hit larger countries the hardest. (I admit that Iceland is an unhelpful exception to my contention!) But if you look back over history I think you would be hard-pressed to come up with persuasive evidence that small countries are particularly vulnerable.
4. Is there really a rule-of-thumb that the correct allocation towards NZ assets should be less than 1% because our share of global assets is less than 1%?
   
   Since when has there been any evidence that asset allocation based on share of global assets has any relevance at all to investment performance? Quite apart from this, an investment strategy based on such a ‘rule-of-thumb’ would be totally impractical.
5. Is it really true that if NZSF invested more in NZ this would crowd existing investment into foreign markets?
   
   Evidence please Chris. And if it is true, why would that matter?
6. Are NZ assets really less desirable to the NZ Government than foreign assets, all else equal?
   
   Really? What precisely are all the things that have to remain equal? Will they? And if they don’t does that mean NZ assets aren’t less desirable for the NZ Government after all?

We all agree that we are in difficult times at present and if we are going to get things sorted, we need more than platitudes and perceived wisdom from those who, unlike me, do understand economics – if anyone does!

And what we don’t need are experts who have a bob each way. In October I questioned Rod Oram’s contention that the doomsayers have got it wrong. In this article Rod claimed that ‘other countries are rejoicing at the stability similar schemes (to NZ Government’s bank deposit scheme) are bringing to their banking systems’. Now he is now telling us ‘we don’t yet get the gravity of this crisis’.

Are you any the wiser?

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

In a previous article on why you should invest in the Sharemarket, I gave my top 10 tips for DIY share market investment.

One of my tips was as follows:

“There are innumerable share purchase recommendations for free and there are many individuals and organisations that provide recommendations to paying subscribers. They can be a valuable source of guidance and information but don’t follow them blindly. Do your own homework and come to your own decisions.”

Clearly some recommendation services are better than others, and I didn’t want to bias the article with my own personal opinions on the matter, particularly as there are probably some great services out there that I have never used and some that I have not even heard about.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d be interested to hear what services others are using and what they think of them, so here’s your chance to contribute!

Please post your comments on which services you subscribe to, how closely you follow their recommendations, what you think of them and why.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.

Things got seriously out of hand as we are all now painfully aware and America turned to its economic policy advisers to come up with a solution. Unfortunately what they came up with left a lot to be desired.

Their solution was to grab $US700 billion of tax payers’ money and buy bad bank loans.  This would have been grossly unfair to taxpayers who were basically being asked to pay megabucks for a load of worthless junk with no compensating upside.

Fortunately the European Union and Britain were alert to this inequity and came up with a much more reasonable, if blindingly obvious solution.  If tax payers’ money had to be used to bail banks out it should be used to purchase equity in the bank.  That way, long-suffering taxpayers would get a commensurate share of the good stuff as well.

Eventually, the wisdom of this proposal dawned on the Americans and they announced that they would follow the European and British lead.  And what happened when they finally got it right? A few billion (or was it trillion?) was promptly wiped off the American share markets! So it’s not just the banks and economic policy advisors in America who seem to have lost the plot.

And the point is? Well, the Americans led us into this mess but, based on their performance to date, we would be foolish to expect them to lead us out.

A copy of a disclosure statement for Tony Ryburn and Sharesight is available here. This is provided in order to comply with our obligations (if any) under the relevant legislation and is not a representation that either Tony or Sharesight is an investment adviser.
Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be investment advice and neither the writers nor Sharesight accept any liability for reliance on information or opinions contained in this blog.