risk tolerance

1. 22 January 2021

   What is your asset allocation?

   Asset allocation — how your investments are split up — is really, really, really important. Get it right and you can make plenty of other mistakes and still be fine. Get it wrong and you're choosing b…

2. 18 October 2019

   My manifesto

   "Wealth" isn't just about money, and "success" is personal. Don't over-complicate your financial life — make it boring so the rest of your life can be interesting. Everyone has a financial plan, wheth…

3. 16 August 2019

   Investing is personal

   How would you invest if you were 60 with $5 million and spent $100,000 a year? Some of my clients in this position sit heavily in defensive assets. Others sit 80-90% in growth assets. Both are right —…

4. 12 July 2019

   How much buffer do you need? (Or: four things I agonise over when providing financial advice)

   I have clients worth tens of thousands of dollars, and clients worth tens of millions of dollars. I find it much easier to advise clients with millions rather than thousands. As a general rule, the we…

5. 28 June 2019

   Questions I ask clients (and why I’m not afraid of roboadvice)

   The most valuable thing I do as a financial adviser isn't running numbers. It's having conversations. The right questions uncover what a client actually cares about, which is usually the hardest and m…

6. 16 September 2018

   How to calculate your asset allocation

   The most important thing to get right when investing in financial assets is asset allocation. It refers to how your funds are invested across different classes, such as shares and bonds. If you get th…

7. 6 August 2018

   The folly of predicting market downturns

   I'll start with a prediction. At some point in the future, the sharemarket will go down. It might go down in a big way. That's as accurate a prediction as anyone can make — timing and scale are out of…

8. 21 August 2017

   What is your investing risk profile? Answering a risk questionnaire won’t tell you.

   If you've engaged a financial adviser, you'll be familiar with risk tolerance questionnaires — and robo-advisers lean on them even harder. Here's a dirty little secret: they're not nearly as valuable…

9. 14 November 2014

   Picking stocks should be the least exciting part of an investment plan

   A financial planner's job isn't to pick stocks. That's the work of someone at a Bloomberg terminal all day. A planner's focus should be you — your circumstances, goals, risk tolerance, cashflow. Asset…