ASIC has been quite vocal in its concern about unlicensed advisers promoting and working in the SMSF sector.
The following clip is a great interview with Graham Colley from the SMSF Professionals Association of Australia (SPAA) discussing the importance of advice.
The interview also highlights the need for accountants to seriously consider their own business and their licensing options prior to 1 July 2013:
I had planned to put out a budget ‘blog’ today, but unfortunately, from a superannuation, investment and financial advisory point of view there is nothing to tell and given it is difficult to write about something that is really nothing more than what we already know
I know I know, it’s only the middle of April, but somehow one day it’s the middle of April and the next it’s June 30 and the last thing anyone needs is to realise on the 1st of July that you haven’t made your super contribution. And believe me, you will realise it 1 minute after midnight on the 1st, with no recourse!
Markets tend not to go in straight lines, on the whole. They instead advance or retreat in waves, each wave higher or lower than the previous one. This is a matter of observation, but the reasons for it are based on logic.
Over the last year or so, the government bond yields of the P.I.G.S. countries—Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain—have more than halved, reflecting the strengthening belief that the ECB will not allow bond market sell-offs to derail the Euro currency.
The GFC began five years ago.
Debt-deflation recessions take much longer to recover from than more “normal” recessions, as evidenced not just by the Great Depression of the 1930s, but by numerous examples from individual countries since then. Japan since 1990 is a perfect example. It has had zero nominal (i.e. before adjusting for inflation) GDP growth since then.
