PORTFOLIO POINT: Cash is fighting back as an asset class. What sort of strategy do you have for your SMSF’s cash holdings? There’s no need to give an SMSF trustee a briefing on volatility. Any trustee with just three years’ experience knows the equity market highs (2007), lows (2008) and rebounds (2009). Property too has […]

Sacre blue! That cheeky Cooper fellow wants to do what? He wants to ban DIY funds from owning artwork! No wonder the nation’s artisan peasants are openly revolting. But it’s not just artwork. Cooper is apparently going to seek a ban on super funds owning collectibles, jewellery, antique cars, yachts, race horses and signed football […]

PORTFOLIO POINT: SMSFs offer trustees the ability to get perfectly flexible super funds – inside and outside super – to meet members’ needs. Super research house Chant West has released a report that is highly critical of Australia’s managed fund superannuation providers in regards to the costs to members of insurance. In the last 10-15 […]

PORTFOLIO POINT: The average SMSF balance will most likely top $1 million this year. Australia’s average SMSF balance could top $1 million this month with the aid of a small recovery in property and equity markets and Australia’s usual end-of-financial-year flurry of contributions. The average DIY super balance was within a whisker of topping seven […]

PORTFOLIO POINT: Shares are out and property’s dominance is entrenched in the NEW super gearing laws, quietly announced in recent days. It was bound to happen. Assistant editor James Frost and I hold a webinar on the gearing laws inside SMSFs and … a week later, the government goes and changes the law. It was […]

PORTFOLIO POINT: Like none before it, superannuation will be a hot button for this year’s federal election. Many Australians might choose to vote on super itself. There comes a point in most people’s lives – and it tends to be some time after turning 50 or 55 – that superannuation becomes the most important financial […]

PORTFOLIO POINT: Detail is desperately required from the Rudd Government on its extension of the new contribution rules for the over 50s. Following a major news event, it’s usually only a matter of days before the first jokes come out. That is, “insert previous applicable joke here”. Towards the end of last year, it was […]

PORTFOLIO POINT: Halving the tax on interest earned outside super creates some more scales that need to be finely balanced for trustees. If SMSF trustees watching last night’s budget felt another headache coming on, then you don’t need me to say that reaching for the painkillers would have done you no good. A second or […]

PORTFOLIO POINT: People can’t take their eyes off property. But the banks are reacting with typical glacial speed to the “new” rules for SMSFs. Have you considered being your own banker? If, like Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens, you find the current bouyancy of Australia’s residential property market a little hard to fathom, be thankful […]

PORTFOLIO POINT: The All Ords punching through 5000 points shouldn’t distract SMSF trustees from what’s important – making sure your super fund is shipshape for June 30. It felt almost like fairies had descended earlier this week when the All Ordinaries reached, albeit briefly, above 5000 points. When it first fell back below 5000 points, […]