About PennyWise Investment

PennyWise was founded in July 2009 by David Bassanese, one of Australia's best-known financial market analysts. A former Treasury official and financial market strategist with Bankers Trust and Macquarie Bank, David is also an expert commentator with The Australian Financial Review and Smart Investor magazine, where his "Bassanese" column appears regularly.

Its goal is to provide concise, independant, transparent, well-researched and  cost-effective investment advice to retail investors, accountants and financial planners. Its existence is a reaction against the overly complex (and overly expensive) manufactured financial products that have been foisted on unsuspecting investors in recent years, which often left many substantially out of pocket.

PennyWise Investment’s birth would not have been possible without the development of one of the simplest yet attractive financial products yet invented – exchange traded funds, or ETFs.

David founded PennyWise Investment after discovering the benefits of exchange traded funds while presenting at the World Money Show in the United States earlier this decade. It was apparent that exchange traded funds – initially designed to help fund managers park their new money under management until they knew where to invest it – had grown in popularity among retail investors, due to their cost-effectiveness and transparency. Trading in ETFs now constitutes around 50% of retail trading activity in the United States.

On returning to Australia, David discovered there were only a few domestically focused ETFs on the Australian market, and even these were not widely known. What’s more, there were no international ETFs that would allow investors to develop well-diversified investment portfolios. One handicap to the local development of ETFs is that, unlike many more expensive managed funds, they do not offer commissions to financial planners that might recommend them.   

In recent years, however, the situation has changed. There are now more than 30 ETFs on the Australian market, and the time is right for Australian investors to have access to quality independent research that can help them select from the growing range of ETFs available.  The move of the financial planning industry away from product commissions to "fee for service" should also encourage the development of ETFs.

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