A recent report by ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) has shed some light on what consumers think of financial advice and of the advisors who deliver it. The report explored the use of financial consultants, and attitudes towards them. Results reveal that people who have already sought advice, or intend to, are more likely […]

I was never a mechanically-minded kid. At the start of year 9 in school, all students were required to choose from a list of elective classes.  The options were woodwork, metalwork or typing. Every other boy in my year 9 class chose woodwork or metalwork. I chose typing. This wasn’t due to any foresight about […]

The global fashion industry is fickle by nature, pushing and then pulling trends to keep hapless consumers forever turning over their wardrobes. Much of the financial services industry works the same way. Fashion designers, manufacturers and media operate by telling consumers what’s in vogue this year, thus artificially creating demand where none previously existed. What […]

Financial planners are familiar with alpha and beta as drivers of long-term investment portfolio returns; but now there’s a third letter to add to the lexicon – gamma – and according to Morningstar, it’s the value created that can be directly attributed to sound financial planning. Portfolios optimised using five techniques identified by David Blanchett, […]

Sound investing for the long term is not just about sticking to your chosen pathway. It also means staying off those investment paths that can derail your journey. In the 1998 British-American romantic comedy ‘Sliding Doors’, the story revolves around two contrasting life outcomes for the central character, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, all stemming from […]

Much financial news purports to be about the future but is really just an account of the past. As a result, many investors project what has already happened onto an imagined future. There’s another way of framing this problem. It’s understandable that investors, with the help of a necessarily short-term-focused media, will tend to focus […]

For some of us, it’s hard to give up on the idea that investment should be exciting. Picking stocks can be fun, after all, and there’s nothing like getting your timing right and bragging about it later with friends. For all the accumulated wisdom about asset allocation and understanding risk, and about diversification and discipline, […]

There are two ways of learning. You can be taught how to do something correctly or you can be shown the consequences of doing it wrong. In the world of investment, it’s a lot cheaper to learn from others’ mistakes. A recent edition of a television current affairs program detailed how elderly Australians, many of […]

Happy New Year Everyone! Now that 2012 has come to a close, we wanted to give you a quick professional update on the HPH team. There were a number of noteworthy achievements in 2012: Rob Pyne was awarded the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® Professional Best Practice Award for Western Australia.  This award recognises the positive contribution Rob […]