Investing Superannuation Australia
You can make a start to learn how to make better investing decisions by learning and understanding what your current super funds are invested in. Does the super fund give you choices of where you can invest your funds, and how often does it allow you to change your investment choices each year? If you are interested in one area of investing over others, eg property or shares, then you should learn more on this subject, as you can also start investing outside of superannuation. Your funds in superannuation are taxed less but you are unable to touch them for another 30 to 35 years. You also need to consider investing outside super to help meet your more medium term goals and grow your wealth outside of super as well. If you are interested in shares then I believe you should learn about both fundamental and technical analysis, they can help you to make wiser decisions about what to invest in and when to invest.  Above is a chart of the ASX200 over the last 20 years until January 2015. It shows the Rate Of Change (ROC) indicator below the chart. This can be used to make medium to long term decisions in the stock market by investing when the ROC is above zero and getting out of the market when the ROC is below zero. Regarding your aggressiveness in your investments, most would say that yes because you are still young you should be aggressive because you have time on your side, so if there is a downturn in your investments then you still have plenty of time for them to recover. I have a different view, and I will use the stock market as an example. Refer back to the chart above, I would be more aggressive when the ROC is above zero and less aggressive when the ROC is below zero. How can you relate this to your super fund? If it does provide you to change your investment choices, then I would be invested in more aggressive investments like shares when the ROC crosses above zero, and then when the ROC moves below zero take a less aggressive approach by moving your investments in the super fund to a more balanced or capital guaranteed strategy where less of your funds are invested in shares and more are invested in bonds and cash. You can also have a similar approach with property. Learn about the property cycles (remember super funds usually invest in commercial and industrial property rather than houses, so you would need to learn about the commercial and industrial property cycles which would be different to the residential property cycle). Regarding your question about SMSFs, if you can increase your knowledge and skills in investing, then yes switching to a SMSF will give you more control and possibly better returns. However, I would avoid switching your funds to a SMSF right now. Two reasons, firstly you would want to increase your knowledge as mentioned above, and secondly you would want to have at least $300,000 in funds before switching to a SMSF or else the setup and compliance costs would be too high as a percentage of your funds at the moment ($70,000). You do have time on your side, so whilst you are increasing your funds you can use that time to educate yourself in your areas of interest. And remember a SMSF is not only an investment vehicle whilst you are building your funds during your working life, but it is also an investment vehicle when you are retired and it becomes totally tax free during this phase, where any investment returns are tax free and any income you take out is also tax free.
"You say: To clarify, my account is with BlackRock and the fund is titled ""MID   CAP GROWTH EQUITY-CLASS A"" if that   helps. Not totally sure what that   means. You should understand what you're investing in.  The fund you have could be a fine investment, or a lousy one.  If you don't know, then I don't know. The fund has a prospectus that describes what equities the fund has a position in.  It will also explain the charter of the fund, which will explain why it's mid-cap growth rather than small-cap value, for example.  You should read that a bit.  It's almost a sure thing that your father had to acknowledge that he read it before he purchased the shares! Again: Understand your investments." Although not technically an answer to your question, I want to address why this is generally a bad idea.   People normally put money into a savings account so that they can have quick access to it if needed, and because it is safe.  You lose both of these advantages with a foreign account.  You are looking at extra time and fees to receive access to the money in those australian accounts.  And, more importantly, you are taking on substantial FX risk.  Since 2000 the AUD exchange rate has gone from a low of 0.4845 to a high of 1.0972.  Those swings are almost as large as the swings of the S&P.  But, you're only getting an average return of 3.5%, instead of the average return people expect with stocks of 10%. A better idea would be to talk to a financial adviser who can help you find an investment that meets your risk tolerance, but gives you a better return than your savings account. On a final thought, the exception to this would be if you plan on spending significant time in Australia.  Having money in a savings account there would actually allow you to mitigate some of your FX risk by allowing you to decide whether to convert USD when you are travelling, or using the money that you already have in your foreign account. The long term view you are referring to would be over 30 to 40 years (i.e. your working life). Yes in general you should be going for higher growth options when you are young. As you approach retirement you may change to a more balanced or capital guaranteed option. As the higher growth options will have a larger proportion of funds invested into higher growth assets like shares and property, they will be affected by market movements in these asset classes. So when there is a market crash like with the GFC in 2007/2008 and share prices drop by 40% to 50%, then this will have an effect on your superannuation returns for that year. I would say that if your fund was invested mainly in the Australian stock market over the last 7 years your returns would still be lower than what they were in mid-2007, due to the stock market falls in late 2007 and early 2008. This would mean that for the 7 year time frame your returns would be lower than a balanced or capital guaranteed fund where a majority of funds are invested in bonds and other fixed interest products. However, I would say that for the 5 and possibly the 10 year time frames the returns of the high growth options should have outperformed the balanced and capital guaranteed options. See examples below: First State Super  AMP Super  Both of these examples show that over a 5 year period or less the more aggressive or high growth options performed better than the more conservative options, and over the 7 year period for First State Super the high growth option performed similar to the more conservative option. Maybe you have been looking at funds with higher fees so in good times when the fund performs well the returns are reduced by excessive fees and when the fund performs badly in not so good time the performance is even worse as the fees are still excessive. Maybe look at industry type funds or retail funds that charge much smaller fees. Also, if a fund has relatively low returns during a period when the market is booming, maybe this is not a good fund to choose. Conversely, it the fund doesn't perform too badly when the market has just crashed, may be it is worth further investigating. You should always try to compare the performance to the market in general and other similar funds. Remember, super should be looked at over a 30 to 40 year time frame, and it is a good idea to get interested in how your fund is performing from an early age, instead of worrying about it only a few years before retirement. You won't know what the exchange rate will be when you convert AUD back to USD when you eventually want to spend your money unless you hedge. the movement in fx rates could easily outweigh any benefit received from higher interest.  As far as i am aware the way the hedge is constructed you will lose any benefit from foreign interest.  That being said, the 'Carry Trade' is big business. There are plenty of people that borrow yen to invest in AUD. "The portfolio described in that post has a blend of small slices of Vanguard sector funds, such as Vanguard Pacific Stock Index (VPACX).  And the theory is that rebalancing across them will give you a good risk-return tradeoff.  (Caveat: I haven't read the book, only the post you link to.) Similar ETFs are available from Vanguard, iShares, and State Street.  If you want to replicate the GFP exactly, pick from them.  (If you have questions about how to match specific funds in Australia, just ask another question.)  So I think you could match it fairly exactly if you wanted to. However, I think trying to exactly replicate the Gone Fishin Portfolio in Australia would not be a good move for most people, for a few reasons: Brokerage and management fees are generally higher in Australia (smaller market), so dividing your investment across ten different securities, and rebalancing, is going to be somewhat more expensive. If you have a ""middle-class-sized"" portfolio of somewhere in the tens of thousands to low millions of dollars, you're cutting it into fairly small slices to manually allocate 5% to various sectors.  To keep brokerage costs low you probably want to buy each ETF only once every one-two years or so.  You also need to keep track of the tax consequences of each of them. If you are earning and spending Australian dollars, and looking at the portfolio in Australian dollars, a lot of those assets are going to move together as the Australian dollar moves, regardless of changes in the underlying assets.  So there is effectively less diversification than you would have in the US. The post doesn't mention the GFP's approach to tax.  I expect they do consider it, but it's not going to be directly applicable to Australia. If you are more interested in implementing the general approach of GFP rather than the specific details, what I would recommend is: The Vanguard and superannuation diversified funds have a very similar internal split to the GFP with a mix of local, first-world and emerging market shares, bonds, and property trusts.  This is pretty much fire-and-forget: contribute every month and they will take care of rebalancing, spreading across asset classes, and tax calculations.  By my calculations the cost is very similar, the diversification is very similar, and it's much easier. The only thing they don't generally cover is a precious metals allocation, and if you want that, just put 5% of your money into the ASX:GOLD ETF, or something similar." A recent survey conducted in Australia shows that although their mining sector is enjoying a boom, services sector is in an opposite condition. Most of the contraction was caused by a decline in new orders among the various players in the services sector while sales and prices also fell.     Just 2 out of 9 sub-sectors (namely, personal and recreational services and finance and insurance) included in the survey has grown during the month. The increased activity in the mining sector is not positively affecting the remaining sectors of the local market.     The chief executive of the Australian Industry Group (AI Group) said that the contraction in the services industry just shows how narrow is its base of development in the broad market.     Several stability in financial states abroad in a period of few months will be favorable for allowing consumer and business confidence to improve, resulting in a gradual increase in spending.     More than half of the world’s mining acquisitions in 2011 has involved projects located in US, Australia and Canada. Other buyers include China, India, Russia and Brazil, all of which increased their acquisitions by 42% since 2006.     In terms of gold, the average deal is valued at USD 41 million where a premium is almost 50%. Propelling the lucrative market is Australia with 15%, United States with 14% and Canada with 49%.     Considering the bigger picture of the industry, PwC seems to be expecting that this year will see record M&amp;A valuations and volumes in the mining sector worldwide.     According to the company, sovereign wealth funds tend to have more advantage in winning transactions because of their low cost of capital.     PwC is assuming that non-miners like sovereign wealth funds, large pension funds and private equity might reassess their approach to the industry and begin to participate more in M&amp;A. This is a somewhat complicated question because it really depends on your personal situation.  For example, the following parameters might impact your optimal asset allocation: If you need the money before 3 years, I would suggest keeping almost all of it in cash, CDs, Treasuries, and ultra safe short-term corporate bonds. If however, you have a longer time horizon (and since you're in your 30s you would ideally have decades) you should diversify by investing in many different asset classes.  This includes Australian equity, international equity, foreign and domestic debt, commodities, and real estate.  Since you have such a long time horizon market timing is not that important. Stock market Tends to follow the DJIA and FTSE, so unlikely to see an Australia-only crash, especially while resources are doing so well. If China's growth slows before other ailing sectors improve, a downturn becomes more likely and the potential severity of the downturn increases. Economy A huge question to which I would refer you to Steve Keen: http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/ See A Fork in the Road. Housing Market It's a bubble, stupid! Seriously, it's as though the Aussies waited for the US to get done and then simply borrowed the copy book. There are a multitude of articles out there about likely outcomes from where the housing market is and where it's going. See this for a sample of what's out there: http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2010/07/26/aussie-housing-bubble-gets-popped-with-chinese-credit-crash/ Note: All three of the areas you raise - economy, stock mkt, housing - are so intertwined that it's tricky separating them out. A lot of reading on Steve Keen's site can help. One more effect that's not yet been mentioned is that companies based in Australia and listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, but which do most of their business overseas, will increase their earnings in AU$, since most of what they earn will be in foreign currencies. So their shares are likely to appreciate (in AU$). "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.afr.com/business/banking-and-finance/financial-services/maurice-blackburn-weighs-cba-class-action-20170823-gy235k) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Law firm Maurice Blackburn and ASX-listed litigation funder IMF Bentham are preparing to launch a class action against Commonwealth Bank of Australia alleging failures to disclose to the stockmarket AUSTRAC&amp;#039;s investigation of its anti money laundering shortcomings.  &gt; Disclosure should have been as early as August 17, 2015, the class action will argue - the date CBA released its annual report and a retail booklet for a $5 billion rights issue.  &gt; CBA has around 800,000 retail shareholders but under class action law, only those who purchased shares and held some of them during the period of alleged non-disclosure will be able to participate in the action.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6vikty/maurice_blackburn_weighs_cba_class_action/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~196808 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **CBA**^#1 **action**^#2 **class**^#3 **AUSTRAC**^#4 **case**^#5" In Australia we have a 50% capital gain discount if you hold the asset for more than 12 months, whether it is in shares, property or other assets. The main reason is to encourage people to invest long-term instead of speculating or trading. The government sees speculation or short term trading as more risky than long term investing for the everyday mum and dad investor, so rewards people it sees taking the lower risk long term view. In my opinion, long term investing, short term trading and speculation can all be risky for someone who is unedutated in the financial markets, and the first rule of investing should be to consider the asset itself and not the tax implications. "I did a little research and found the eligible investments for TFSAs. In this document under heading ""Shares of private and other corporations"", sub heading ""Shares of small business corporations"" there is clause about owning less than 10% share and less than $25000 total value of the corporation. Generally, a connected shareholder of a corporation (as  defined in subsection 4901(2) of > the Regulations) at any time  is a person who   owns, directly or indirectly, at that time,  10% or more of the shares   of any class of shares of the  corporation or of any other corporation   related to the  corporation.    However, where   • such a person is   dealing at arm's length with the  corporation or any other related   corporation; and   • the aggregate cost amount of all shares of the   corporation  or any other related corporation the person owns, or is    deemed to own, is less than $25,000 that person will not be a   connected shareholder of the  corporation. For purposes of the 10%   and $25,000 tests, the rules in the  definition of ìspecified   shareholderî in subsection 248(1)  apply with the result that certain   shares will be deemed to be  owned by the shareholder. For example, by   virtue of  paragraphs (a) and (b), respectively, of that definition,   an  annuitant, a beneficiary or a subscriber under a plan trust is    deemed to own the shares owned by a person with whom the  annuitant,   beneficiary or subscriber is not dealing at armís  length, as well as   the shares owned by the plan trust.  In addition, any share that  • the annuitant, beneficiary, or subscriber under a plan trust;  or • a person not dealing at arm's length with any of the above  has a right to acquire is also included in the calculation of the  percentage and   cost amount of the shares held for purposes  of the 10% and $25,000   tests pursuant to subsection  4901(2.2) of the Regulations." For a lot of info on different funds, fees, average returns, etc, see this site. (Not all sections are free - but areas like Best of the Rest are, and they offer good basic starting info.) I think for getting further into the nitty-gritty, for example if a fund is socially responsible, you will need to go to the individual fund sites or read reviews - although sites like Morningstar may help. However, a few funds like this are: HESTA, Cruelty Free Super, and VicSuper (I'm with the latter). It might be useful to check out their sites to orient yourself to the Aussie approach to this issue, and then start searching more broadly from there. And for what it's worth, for a general overview of the Superannuation system, and some nice-to-know info, see this page on the Oz govt website. Virgin and AMP Flexible Super both offer funds that track Australian indexes. As I said in the comments, from the SMH article, you will get $3.30 per share you hold in Wotif. The bit about Wotif veing replaced in the S&P ASX200 index by another company has no impact on your shares in Wotif. It just means that the index (the amalgamation of 200 companies) will have one drop out (Wotif) and another replace it (Healthscope).