Quote Originally Posted by nizzy View Post
whats a large enough investment amount to justify a relationship with a full service broker like Craigs or Forbar? Is it a portfolio of $100k , $1 mill , $2 mill +?
Our sharebroker provides a good report every 6 months and does annual tax summary. He makes most of his money by charging 1% brokerage on every buy or sell. All up cost to us amounts to a few thou each year. Obviously more expensive than a self service ASB or sharieses, but I like the broker analyses and reassurance of a person to bounce thoughts off now and then. Is it worth it? I sometimes wonder, but on balance yes.
It has been proven that these 'full service' brokerage firms provide sub-par performance than what the novice investor could do by simply buying the index ETF fund. Warren Buffet for many decades has proven this relationship.

From 2000 onwards, the great rush to discount online brokers came about to the retail investors in masses. Canada followed suit 10 years later however for NZ? I'm afraid the brokers here are very much like the Canadian brokers of the 1980s, charging absurd management fees for little benefit to their clients. If you go look at the brokerage scene today in America, pretty much all the major full brokerage firms have been decimated to the point that they scrapped all those ideas of charging 1% on the trades (like really, who in their right mind can charge 1% net ????).

But who am I to say? I'm a staunch supporter of owning stocks that pay no dividends in favour for NZ's no tax on capital gain; a concept even the brokers and financial advisers don't seem to understand because they don't explain taxation very well to all their clients. (they say go see a tax accountant... and that accountant may say you should get the dividends while you can as you never know if that NZ listed company will go bust).

Over 3 years ago I attended a Jarden seminar here in Christchurch. The guy was canvassing clients willing to invest $500K+ for them to manage. What a whole bunch of crockery. In NZ, attracting foreign investment is a problem despite houses (owned for more than 10 years) have no capital gains tax. So you don't see much of the international $ coming into NZ to build high rise apartments and hotels and such like you would see over in America. It's because of the same kind of NZ mentality.