ETF inquiry

G’day Andie-Samantha!

Dave has a great comment here, so I’ll keep mine basic and refer to one of my all-time favourite quotes and what it means…

"99% of long-term investing is doing nothing; the other 1% changes your life." - Morgan Housel.

For ETF investments, the investment process is quite straight-forward:

1. Make sure you have selected your chosen ETFs (the PDS’ for each ETF is a great place to start to understand what happens with tax, who the share registry is… see next point, when dividends/distributions are paid, etc.).

2. Update your tax details in the share registry. It’s typically Link Market Services, Computershare or Boardroom for Australian ETFs. These are the companies that manage your shareholding — you tell them your bank details so they can pay the dividends into that account, you make sure they have your tax file number so you’re not paying extra tax, it helps with doing tax returns, etc. See our tax on shares guide.

3. Keep learning. I’ve found that just 15 minutes a week keeps the Dr Doom Doctor away. Meaning, I find that if people pay some attention to learning about investing from a trusted source they tend to be more informed and confident when things inevitably look scary. However, spending too much time looking at a portfolio or financial news (when they don’t know how to read financial news) is a disaster. Put another way, I think continuous learning is a must for true wealth creation (Dave’s book is a great example of this!) but don’t forget my opening quote — avoid acting on every news snippet, podcast, social media tweet or whatever.

4. (Optional) Stay up to date with a trusted source. Frankly, some people don’t care about finances or business news or any of that stuff — which is completely cool. That’s why we have compulsory Superannuation — for the Ostriches who stick their head

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Hey Andie,

Nice work getting started :)

In terms of monitoring, firstly I would make sure your Pearler account is connected to Sharesight. That will make it a lot easier to check performance as well as keep track of any income you’re being paid for tax purposes.

But if you’re a long term investor, there usually isn’t too much monitoring that needs to be done. Especially where the focus is 5-10-20 years or more. We need to give out investments a long runway to work their magic and not over-analyse the short term stuff.

Depending on the ETF, you could also check the ETF providers website for the fund and look at their latest info on what the top companies are, the sector breakdown etc to see if you’re still happy with it. But it depends on the reasoning for buying a particular ETF in the first place. If it’s mostly a set and forget type investment that you expect to add to over the next decade or more, then monitoring isn’t something that is big on the radar of long term investors.

Hope that helps.
Dave