Hi all,

Pretty new to investment and been lurking in the forum for a bit building up knowledge. At a stage where I'm gradually building up a stash in a Prem Saver cash account with intent to build-up a small (but hopefully growing) investment portfolio over the coming years.

My intended initial approach is to be pretty conservative/passive and become more active as I read more and become familiar with tools and techniques of fundamental analysis.

To that end I'm thinking about initially dropping some dollars into one of the US Vanguard passive fund ETFs available on the ASX (prob the S&P500 one - VTS.AX) because of their minimal management rate and reasonable return.

They're often recommended as a default option to newbie investors in the US - I'm just wondering if the gloss comes off when buying them as ETFs via the ASX?

As I understand it the ETFs are in US currency and not hedged. Dividends are automatically reinvested into the fund so there are no double taxation of dividends as with other ASX traded shares purchased in NZD.

I've seen posts elsewhere noting the risk of double currency exposure (NZD<>AUD<>USD). I know next to nothing about FSX but it seems probable that our dollar will fall back against the USD over 5+ years but the Oz is a bit of a wildcard.

Has anyone else looked down this path as a stop-gap low-maintenance investment? Any recommendations to resources/reading to better assess the currency risk of investing in a US ETF on the ASX?

As a footnote, I'm considering the same thing (passive indexes) on the NZX for NZ holdings but the options are slim and as others have noted, fairly lack-lustre performers hampered by a much smaller number of listings with large biases to a small number of large NZ companies (e.g. TEL).

For NZ holdings other initial options I can see are to go with a managed fund or stay out of the market until I'm confident picking stocks. I'm reading Pat Dorsey's "Five Rules for Successful Stock Investing" at the moment and finding that a good read. Will be interesting to see how well the advice can be applied to the NZ market.