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Friday, 17 September 2021
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In traditional economics, utility theory assumed that investors work off probability-weighted outcomes. Prospect theory can better explain actual investor behaviour and is a better tool for designing retirement plans.
Loss aversion means some people avoid annuities because a premature death may lead to a loss of capital, but lifetime annuities with death benefits aim to address this problem.
A common concern for superannuants is how changes to the super system will affect their retirement outcomes. In reality, the proposed changes won’t affect the majority, but poor investment choices will.
Financial risk aversion defines our attitudes to taking financial risk. Your style of risk aversion could be relative or absolute or a bit of both. It's good to recognise your own tendencies for the benefit of your portfolio.
Financial risk aversion is usually measured via a questionnaire compiled by an adviser, which provides a one-dimensional numerical measure. But this does not cover all there is to learn about a client's aversion to risk.
We may already know how risk averse we are when it comes to investing, but how much of this is affected by ambiguity aversion. A better understanding of financial products could improve the investment choices we make.
Who knew? With some surprise results, the Government is on unexpected firm ground in asking people to draw on all their assets in retirement, although the comments show what feisty and informed readers we have.
It's a remarkable statistic. In any year since 1875, if you had invested in the Australian stock index, turned away and come back eight years later, your average return would be 120% with no negative periods.
Never stand between Australian households and an uncapped government programme with $3 billion in ‘free money’ to build or renovate their homes. But excess supply is coming with an absence of net migration.
Picking macro trends is difficult. What may seem logical and compelling one minute may completely change a few months later. There are better rewards from focussing on identifying the best companies at good prices.
Some high-quality companies have emerged even stronger since the onset of COVID and are well placed for outperformance. We call these the ‘COVID Opportunists’ as they are now dominating their specific sectors.
Critics of franking credits are missing the main point. The taxable income of shareholders/taxpayers must also include the company tax previously paid to the ATO before the dividend was distributed. It is fair.