Quote Originally Posted by Jaa View Post
I left Milford's KS and their so called "active growth fund" after it started looking less "active" with some of the top 5 holdings simply being ETFs. That and the fact the FMA caught one of their traders manipulating share prices. After repeated correspondence Milford refused to acknowledge that any wrongdoing had occurred despite paying a $1.5m fine. The trader is still a shareholder. A pity as I had been a big fan in part because they invest in NZ and advocated for better NZ corporate governance.

I moved to Superlife whose fees are less than half of Milford's and allows you to select what ETFs you want directly. Split my funds:

50% to NZ mid cap ETF
25% to APAC ETF
25% to Emerging markets ETF

So far am about even for the last 11 months but would have done better in the US 500 ETF or Total World ETF. Early days still and always nice to have some overseas exposure to balance the NZ assets.

Always been a firm believer too that Kiwisaver exists in part to invest in NZ, build NZ capital markets, companies and NZ Inc's wealth.

Problem is, the Kiwi stockmarket is dying. There is no flow of decent new listings to replace the natural attrition, and the market is becoming less and less diversified.

Kiwisaver is effectively contributing to this by mandating a low fee passive approach, which isn't going to broaden capital market access for businesses as there are fewer fund managers to sift through and allocate capital to those fledgling businesses.

The function of Kiwisaver now is to goose up the returns of the dwindling number of stocks, by providing a price-insensitive buyer of these stocks at all times.