kiwisaver worth a punt?

[RazorX]

Has anyone been in (Or is in) Craigs Investment Partners or Gareth Morgan Kiwisaver scheme? I'm thinking of going into one of them I just can't make up my mind of which one so a little bit of advice/opinion wouldn't go amiss.

Thanks

Razor

[ENP]

Has anyone been in (Or is in) Craigs Investment Partners or Gareth Morgan Kiwisaver scheme? I'm thinking of going into one of them I just can't make up my mind of which one so a little bit of advice/opinion wouldn't go amiss.

Thanks

Razor

I've been with Gareth Morgan in the past. His fund is hopeless. High fees for poor returns. The only thing that they do differently from other funds is show you which companies they invest in and send you a monthly report statement of how the months went investment wise.

I didn't really care about the monthly statement as 90% of the time they were losing me money, but didn't lose as much as their "benchmark" so were harping on about how good they were... LOL what a joke.

I'm with Superlife now, it's great, I can choose my % of different investments, eg. 50% NZ Stocks, 25% Aus Stocks, 25% World Stocks, can also choose property, bonds, overseas bonds, cash, etc.

If I was you I'd really look into Superlife too. Their fees are about 1/3 of Gareth Morgan and their performances are better generally because it's a more passive type fund as opposed to active. Lower fees = more returns in my back pocket so can't really complain about making more money.

You can change your % make up of your portfolio anytime and aren't stuck to the 3 options of conservative, balanced and growth like Gareth Morgan has.

Just my 2 cents from my past experiences.

[shasta]

I've been with Gareth Morgan in the past. His fund is hopeless. High fees for poor returns. The only thing that they do differently from other funds is show you which companies they invest in and send you a monthly report statement of how the months went investment wise.

I didn't really care about the monthly statement as 90% of the time they were losing me money, but didn't lose as much as their "benchmark" so were harping on about how good they were... LOL what a joke.

I'm with Superlife now, it's great, I can choose my % of different investments, eg. 50% NZ Stocks, 25% Aus Stocks, 25% World Stocks, can also choose property, bonds, overseas bonds, cash, etc.

If I was you I'd really look into Superlife too. Their fees are about 1/3 of Gareth Morgan and their performances are better generally because it's a more passive type fund as opposed to active. Lower fees = more returns in my back pocket so can't really complain about making more money.

You can change your % make up of your portfolio anytime and aren't stuck to the 3 options of conservative, balanced and growth like Gareth Morgan has.

Just my 2 cents from my past experiences.

Thanks for your input ENP, i'd like something close to an 80% Asia (split between China, Japan, India, Hong Kong), & 20% Australian split

The fee isn't my main consideration, the absolute returns from a growth fund are

[fungus pudding]

Has anyone been in (Or is in) Craigs Investment Partners or Gareth Morgan Kiwisaver scheme? I'm thinking of going into one of them I just can't make up my mind of which one so a little bit of advice/opinion wouldn't go amiss.

Thanks

Razor

I'm in Garreth Morgan's fund. It's pretty useless, but I only contribute minimum $100 per month to get the govt. 1k per year tax credit and the unitial 1k. I'm so near drop out age of 65 so don't care much. He doesn't seem to beat any others, but I suspect he's not likely to lose as much if it all gloes tits-up.

[Traderx]

I think you're all bit unfair to Gareth, His 1% fee covers everything (except fees for funds in which they invest as opposed to direct securities holdings). So includes brokerage, investment management, trustee, admin fees etc etc that all the others split out or take from fund assets.

And performance wise they've done ok if you look from inception, they hardly lost any money though 08/09 when most others were down 20-40% (growth funds). However since then have underperformed, initially due to high cash allocation (which is what saved them earlier) and then when they did invest they were slow to hedge back into NZD and when it appreciated that wiped most gains from rising markets. So over 3 odd years they are pretty even with those who more followed the index and hedged fully to NZD. So not great but not bad either.

The reporting you get each month is excellent.

I don't work for them or anything but do have my Kiwisaver with them (Growth) and will keep it there for now. They are a pretty upfront bunch and regularly run sessions where they talk about the market, what they got wrong and right and you can grill them.

They have some holdings of things I really like, like the Platinum funds out of aussie, MSFT, YUM, GLD, CSCO, GOOG, AAPL etc etc. They just need to get their currency management sorted. I'm watching closely.

Superlife doesn't look too bad though, just not sure how long they will survive though.. their website is slightly amateurish (not unusual for NZ funds mgmt business though)

Milford is worth a look as well

www.milfordasset.co.nz

[p2r]

Milford is really well run but nz/aus only, I can't find a fund that is not diversified so all you know is that you are international shares but specific countries or shares is hard to find in most cases.

[shasta]

Milford is really well run but nz/aus only, I can't find a fund that is not diversified so all you know is that you are international shares but specific countries or shares is hard to find in most cases.

Is Milford the fund run by Brian Gaynor?

[buns]

Yeah it is - looks like a near duplicate to Fishers local portfolio..

[minimoke]

I think you're all bit unfair to Gareth,

TraderX, you'll see throughout this thread I'm not a huge supporter of Gareth - my tolerance evaporated when he entered the Global warming debate. However, each person needs to do their own research and invest accordingly.

I will make one point though - over the past few years we have seen billions and billions of investor money lost on the back of "personality" funds.

A while back we had guru Doug Edgar Somers and look how much money Money Mangers lost. We've had Jock Hobbs, Pine tree Mead and Richard long all spruiking someone else's asset destroying investment vehicles. More recently we have seen Timaru Grannies loose their knitting in the cult that was Alan Hubbard.

We can each take our lessons from the last few years. One I will be taking is to NEVER give my money to a fund back by an individual personality. There is a whole lot more work that needs to be done when drilling down into the investment offerings. Given the amount of work this takes I'll just take off the list of potential vehicles anything with a backers name as part of the marketing collateral.

And one last word on Gareth - would you trust an Economist?

[Traderx]

TraderX, you'll see throughout this thread I'm not a huge supporter of Gareth - my tolerance evaporated when he entered the Global warming debate. However, each person needs to do their own research and invest accordingly.

I will make one point though - over the past few years we have seen billions and billions of investor money lost on the back of "personality" funds.

A while back we had guru Doug Edgar Somers and look how much money Money Mangers lost. We've had Jock Hobbs, Pine tree Mead and Richard long all spruiking someone else's asset destroying investment vehicles. More recently we have seen Timaru Grannies loose their knitting in the cult that was Alan Hubbard.

We can each take our lessons from the last few years. One I will be taking is to NEVER give my money to a fund back by an individual personality. There is a whole lot more work that needs to be done when drilling down into the investment offerings. Given the amount of work this takes I'll just take off the list of potential vehicles anything with a backers name as part of the marketing collateral.

And one last word on Gareth - would you trust an Economist?

Fair enough thats a reasonable critique, and I've had the same thought myself about personalities running funds. Theres no doubt that he is pretty prominent, though you could say the same about Gaynor at Milford, Carmel F at Fisher funds and previously Botherway at Brook etc.

But not really the same as the hubbard/meads/DSE situation i think.

GMI/GMK is investing in platinum funds, vanguard/blackrock/others ETFs and individual stocks like GOOG, MSFT, AAPL, YUM etc etc

Check out platinum if you are interested

www.platinum.com.au

What I'm saying is its harder for a personality (or any one person) to fraudulently or incompetently stuff that up than it is a finance company because the investments are known and the performance is verifiable. Sure the assets might under perform or whatever but not the same kind of situation as some of the names you mentioned.

Cheers