Nathan Field, Senior Equity Analyst at Gareth Morgan Investments
On a recent US holiday, my wife and I found ourselves hunting for an Apple power cable in a Best Buy store (think of an aircraft hangar-sized Dick Smith). When a sales assistant led us to the right section, we balked at the US$85 ($108) price tag, since we only needed the cable for a few weeks. The assistant then whispered a solution - as long as we kept the box and the receipt, we could use the cable for the duration of our road trip, then take it back to any Best Buy store for a full refund. Perfect, we said, and hurried to join the long checkout queue. But after a few minutes of slow progress, we realised we'd joined the returns line, chock-full of people doing e...
Gareth Morgan, Director at Gareth Morgan Investments
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Gareth Morgan, Director at Gareth Morgan Investments
Video Transcript
Interviewer: Gareth, the government’s budget is coming up on 24th May and they’ve said it will be their second consecutive budget with no new spending. Is there an argument in times like this for the government to actually be spending more, not less?
Gareth: I don’t think the path to nirvana comes by spending money you haven’t got necessarily. And New Zealand’s not in a recession, it’s just in slow growth, so spending for spending’s sake, I would definitely not advocate that. I just want to see a quality appraisal of their spending and why they’...
John Carran, Senior Economist at Gareth Morgan Investments
Government negotiations around the SkyCity convention centre are not a storm in a tea cup. They set a dangerous precedent. Arrangements like this, if they become common, risk denting the credibility of New Zealand's economic governance. This would have negative consequences for New Zealand's economic development.
Good economic governance is about the Government setting economic objectives to better society as a whole and acting in a way that achieves those objectives at minimal cost. It has many different dimensions and involves complex interactions. But at a high level, good economic governance is about the Government and its agencies strongly protecting ...
Gareth Morgan, Director at Gareth Morgan Investments
It is no coincidence that around the world attention has turned to how an economic recovery can be garnered against a backdrop of housing markets still on their knees. In the US house prices are down 30 per cent from their 2007 peak and 40 per cent of owners have negative equity. In Spain, Europe's largest sick dog, house prices are down 20 per cent and the local experts say 20 per cent more is needed. The populist discussion is that housing in these economies has to be resuscitated before they can enter a prolonged recovery.
Such a view is myopic in the extreme. It is over-investment in housing and the lending largesse that underpinned the orgy of excess that led t...
Morgan Online April 2012 Investment: Comparing Apple with Blackberry Money: Managing Your Savings in Retirement Economy: Risks of Following the Herd KiwiSaver: Options for the Over 65s GMI: Client Adviser in Hawke's Bay Opinion: Is the Ministry Really That Fat? Gareth's World: How to Keep in Touch Investment: Comparing Apple with Blackberry Five years is a lifetime in the digital world. These articles show the contrasting fortunes of current market darling Apple and the maker of 2007's hot smartphone, Research in Motion.
Can Apple keep growing? Blackberry no longer pick of the bunch Money: Managing Your Savings in Retirement When it comes to managing your savings in retirement there are three things you need to do – understand, identify and manag...
Nathan Field, Senior Equity Analyst at Gareth Morgan Investments
Even those not invested in Apple are aware that the stock has been doing phenomenally well lately. This year alone, the share price is up 50%, and on a twelve month basis the increase is more than 80% (in US dollar terms). While the buying frenzy has been driven by earnings upgrades and a strong set of product releases, not hot air and hype, it’s worth looking at the company with a fresh pair of eyes given its meteoric rise.
Apple is currently the largest stock in the S&P 500 with a market cap of around US$550bn, one of only four companies to ever pass the $500bn mark (the others being Cisco, Microsoft and Exxon Mobil). History tells us that once a...
The Answer Room
Video Transcript
I know KiwiSaver is a retirement savings scheme, so what happens once you retire?
There is no retirement age in New Zealand, but 65 is the current age of eligibility for NZ Super, the government pension. 65 is also the age you become eligible to access the money in your KiwiSaver account, if you have been in a KiwiSaver scheme for at least 5 years. So if you joined when you were 64, you won’t become eligible until age 69.
As KiwiSaver was started in July 2007, the earliest anyone over 65 will be eligible to withdraw will be July 2012.
Will I be able to take out all my money when I’m eligible to with...
