Editor’s Letter February 2018

I’m an optimistic person by nature (probably a little bit too much so when it has come to some past financial investments) lately, though not even my overabundance of positivity is enough to make it through the financial news without coming away with at least a small amount of dread. Concerns about rising debt levels, housing affordability, tightened credit, rattled business confidence, overseas e-commerce undermining local retail, the sense by some that the fact that it has been ten years since the GFC means that we are due for another pounding, crazy blockchain tulip mania… ahh (breathe) and that’s just the first few pages. Luckily though, there is still some rationale for my optimism. And Sir Michael Cullen could actually be responsible for my excited anticipation for the future. That’s a sentence I never imagined writing. But as the architect of KiwiSaver, he has helped to create an environment for our own pool of capital investment. Rather than businesses having to follow the ebb and flow of global cash, we can fund our own growth and by 2030, this could be at the capacity of $200 billion.

I have to confess that I had a bit of help forming this rationale of my optimism from someone much more qualified than myself in terms of the financial news and what contentment to draw from it. In this issue, we talk with Sam Stubbs, the founder of KiwiSaver fund, Simplicity, and someone who is helping to evolve Cullen’s legacy into something even more powerful and something that impacts all Kiwis from all walks of life from big business to small families for a long time to come. On another positive note, Bitcoin’s really expensive at the moment but Kings Plants Barn have a 2 for 1 special on their 15-packs of Super Yellow Tulips, so now could be a good time to load up your portfolio.