Newbie looking to learn

[kiwidollabill]

I've been a long time 'watcher' of this thread and think it's now time I walk the talk and contribute to the community. Please feel free to pull me up on saying anything 'stupid'....

I'm 29yr M professional and today I just got a job offer to move me from my current role (technical sales) into the banking/financial sector. So I should learn something along the way here too.

I spent 7yrs at the University of Otago and finished up with a science PhD, through this and my previous job I have had a fair bit of exposure to PEB and BLT so may add my 2c in on those threads.

Investing has always been interesting to me - I'm big on 'passive investing' so my current portfolio is exposed to global stocks, institutional bonds and smartFNZ via Superlife/NZX. Plan is to keep 80% of funds locked into this (60:10:1) and have 20% on individual stocks with a focus on picking companies with good management experience and value for growth, speculative bets don't really interest me.

I have a bit of experience with biotech/science/startups but am pretty bearish around the current NZ offerings, most of the smart/profitable money in these is kept unlisted, nuff said.

Current lack of understanding is around tax and accounting so am hoping to pick up my knowledge a bit in this area.