Educational Articles

Rodger has authored many educational articles that help inform Money Matters' clients. These range from his Common Cents personal investment column and NZ Herald Opinion Pieces through to internationally published academic articles and book chapters. Clients have access to all these articles and Rodger’s ongoing writing.

Here is an extract from a Common Cents article that Rodger wrote about Irrational Behaviour:

If you believe our financial decision making is always based on rational judgment, think again. Research into our behaviour suggests that most of us are prone to error, irrationality and emotion and frequently make choices which don’t maximise our financial wellbeing. If we are aware of these weaknesses, we can use that knowledge to make better investment decisions.

 ‘Behavioural’ economics, as it is called, aims to identify why we make the financial decisions that we do. By looking at factors such as over-confidence, short termism and loss aversion, it discovers ways in which our financial decision making is less rational than we might think. In the process, it challenges the more established approach to economics known as the ‘neoclassical’ school which assumes everything can be explained on the basis of investors making rational decisions.

Here is an extract from a NZ Herald Opinion Piece that Rodger wrote about Climate Change:

There is a spectrum of activities investors can undertake to respond to climate change – and many are doing so. You can "exit with voice" as the Anglican Church's Auckland Synod has done in resolving to exclude companies from its portfolio and publicising that decision.

Another approach is to remain invested and to use the power of your shareholding to engage with the company. For example, in the hierarchy of climate change impacts, brown coal is more polluting than black coal, so you might engage with a big resources company to stop it investing in new brown coal mines. Indeed, many of the big miners are already selling off such assets.

For New Zealanders who want to take the issue of climate change seriously there is a range of options. You can have your KiwiSaver or other funds invested with a fund manager that excludes fossil fuels' extraction. Alternatively you can invest with a fund manager that engages with companies about climate change