Quote Originally Posted by justakiwi View Post
I absolutely know this, and agree with you. My first purchase was KFL back in 2016. I knew nothing back then and bought for the wrong reason - a friend had them. But, I have been very happy with their performance since then, and as I have said before, their quarterly dividends, DRP with discounted SP, has been a huge plus for me. I pretty much just sit back and watch my holding grow, without having to spend any additional capital on them. I recently added BRM and MLN to complete the trio. At this moment in time, they are providing me with decent diversification and good returns. As long as they continue to do that I’m not concerned that can’t beat the index. I’m not investing to build wealth. I have started way too late and have insufficient capital to realistically achieve that. My focus (hope) is simply to build my overall portfolio value, over the next 6 years and into retirement, to give me a little more financial security down the track. It will sit alongside my KS (which will also never be huge as again, I was a late starter to KS). My reality is I will be dependent on government super when I retire, but I live a minimalistic and reasonably frugal life. When I retire my KS and my portfolio investment will just sit there doing their thing. I have no intention of cashing either of them up when I retire. I will access them if and as needed, to supplement my super.

Having said all that, who knows if I’m doing this the right way? Everything is a gamble but at least now, I feel I’m being proactive and even if it all turns to custard, I am really enjoying this. I have always been a “learner” and have always liked to challenge myself. In the past, it was mostly related to computers - I had to always be learning new things and figuring out how things worked “under the hood.” I was never a geek but used to do dumb things like install Linux from command line, just for fun. Learning just for the sake of it I guess. So now I’m learning about investing, and trying to prove to myself that I can do it - even if only on a very minuscule scale!
To be fair, I did not add in my post that I took have an "active" part of my portfolio which I manage myself. Like you say its all about learning and becoming a more informed investor. Whether I outperform, I do not know, but if I do it is not by much. One small addition, they do say that NZ fund managers in NZ can outperform the NZ 50 index because they have better information than the overseas funds that play in our market and are more able to exit and enter when required. Not 100% sure on the data on this but I did hear it from a reputable source. That would also apply then to us retail investors as we know the market here in NZ better than our overseas counterparts.

Percy speaks a lot of sense with his suggestions and ratio's. But for me to fully get through an annual report, some form of accountancy training will be your best help.