On Point

Will the OCR start to rise again this year, how might sharemarkets perform and where is the NZ dollar headed? Nobody has a perfectly working crystal ball, but its a useful process to go through to help firm up your thinking nonetheless. Despite the futility of trying to forecast where financial markets are headed, here's our contribution to the noise!

Welcome to a new year! Let's tackle an important and popular topic that every self-respecting kiwi has a strong opinion about - the housing market. Why have prices done nothing for three years, is 2026 the year of the housing market recovery, and what should prospective homeowners or investors be expecting?

There’s just three trading days to go in 2025, and that’s all. We’re pretty much at the end of 2025, so let's look back on how returns from most of the main asset classes stacked up and make a few observations for investors.

Inflation is back the target band and while it's not dead and buried, it's at least contained. However, that doesn't mean we can declare the cost-of-living crisis over. The things with inflation is that it measures the rate of change in prices, not the level of prices. Let's talk about why that matters.

Should I pay off the mortgage faster, or use that extra cash to invest? If this isn't the most common investor question, then it's definitely in the top five. The textbook, Excel spreadsheet, and your purist accountant friend are all likely to suggest paying down the mortgage. There's good reason for that, but when might it make sense to ignore the rules and do some investing on the side anyway?