1) THERE IS ALWAYS A CYCLE Investment markets constantly go through cyclical phases. Some are short term. Some are longer, such as the secular swings seen over 10 to 20 year periods in shares. Some get stuck in certain phases for long periods. Debate is endless about what drives cycles, but they continue. All eventually contain the seeds of their own reversal. 2) THE CROWD GETS IT WRONG AT EXTREMES Cycles in markets get magnified by bouts of investor irrationality that...

New Zealand shares edged higher in the final day of April trading, capping a 1.8 percent gain for the month that saw the benchmark index cross the 10,000 level for the first time. by BusinessDesk The S&P/NZX 50 Index increased 1.06 points, or 0.01 percent, to 10,013.83. Within the index, 23 stocks rose, 22 fell, and five were unchanged. Turnover was $195.2 million, of which Trade Me Group accounted for $42.4 million. Trading was subdued with a lot of investors in...

The February/March 2019 reporting season was preceded by a relatively brutal confession period, where several meaningful downgrades led to a widespread readjustment in consensus estimates. Consequently, the lower expectations were generally met, although as usual there were still surprises, both positive and negative. Markets rallied in relief not because results were strong but because they weren’t worse than recently trimmed expectations. In fact, excluding resources, industrials struggled to achieve mid-single digit growth. After months of getting beaten up by the...

Written by Mark Hampton With interest rates so low, are your savings going backwards? With interest rates at record lows and set to stay that way for the foreseeable future (RBNZ Governor Adrian Orr has recently said he expects them to hold steady until at least 2021), many New Zealanders may not be getting the returns required to fund their retirement. At the time of writing one of the big four banks is offering customers 2.10% pa on funds held...

OVERVIEW Salesforce.com, Inc. is a software-as-a-service vendor that primarily develops customer relationship management, or CRM, products. The firm has a variety of cloud-based tools targeting horizontal markets such as Sales Cloud, to monitor sales leads, Service Cloud, for customer support, Marketing Cloud, to launch digital marketing campaigns, Commerce Cloud, a multitenant e-commerce tool, Quip, its collaboration tools, and the Salesforce Platform, which allows enterprises tobuild applications. Beyond this, Salesforce has various initiatives such as Trailhead, Einstein AI, Lightning, Internet of Things,...

Investment markets equity prices have had a good start to the year, though the price gains have yet to recover all the ground lost in the global sell-off late last year. The more defensive, income-oriented sectors have done especially well as investors have worried less about the valuation threat from potential bond yield rises, and have viewed less cyclical equities as a useful hedge against global growth shocks. Looking ahead, the central scenario is ongoing global growth at a modestly...

A SUMMARY OF SOME RECENT TAX REFORMS IN NZ There is currently no broad based capital gains tax (CGT) in New Zealand, although certain “gains” are deemed to be income in certain circumstances. Income tax for example does apply to property transactions in certain circumstances, particularly in the case of speculation. New Zealand’s last major program of tax reform occurred in the 1980s. This included the following changes: The top marginal rate of income tax was reduced from 66% to 33%...

Capital Gains Tax - Is it time to sell the rental? For decades owning a rental property has been an aspiration for many New Zealanders. After all where else can you safely invest? A generation were caught out by the 1987 share market crash and most have been too afraid to step back in. With leverage, preferential tax treatment(s) and limited housing supply, it has proven to be a good bet for the most part. Now the potential for a Capital...

IMPAX Environmental Impact Fund (IEM) Investment objective The Company’s objective is to enable investors to benefit from growth in the markets for cleaner or more efficient delivery of basic services of energy, water and waste. Investments are made predominantly in listed companies which provide, utilise, implement or advise upon technology-based systems, products or services in environmental markets, particularly those of alternative energy and energy efficiency, water treatment and pollution control, and waste technology and resource management (which includes sustainable food, agriculture...

Although equities, overseas and at home, have been recovering from their sell-offs in October, they are still well below their previous peaks. Looking ahead, the global economy looks like continuing its already long post-GFC expansion into 2019, which should be supportive for growth assets, but equities remain over dependent on the performance of American shares and the American economy, and there are risks (notably around trade wars and potential mistakes from accidentally overtightening monetary policy) which could derail this outlook. In...