Achieving wealth creation goals by building a cost and tax efficient portfolio is never easy, but index ETFs can be an invaluable tool to do it.

An increasing recognition by investors of the power of portfolio diversification would rank among the top reasons for the sustained and fast-growing popularity of exchange traded funds (ETFs).

Index ETFs can be a very tax efficient way to build wealth.

ETFs are growing in popularity by the day, with Australians now entrusting nearly $40 billion of their savings in these products.

One of the most fundamental issues for investors is how to create a properly diversified portfolio – whether from scratch or by reworking an existing portfolio.

Some retirees and other investors fast-approaching retirement set aside one to two years of living expenses if possible in a cash "bucket". This is to act as a volatility buffer to try to avoid having to sell growth assets at depressed prices to provide enough retirement income during a market downturn.

Among the prime reasons for the popularity of exchange traded funds (ETFs) is that the products pass a series of ease-of-investing tests. This is in addition to their typically low costs.

Commentary by Andy Clarke, senior investment strategist in Vanguard Investment Strategy Group.

It is about now when those well-intentioned New Year resolutions start to come under pressure.

It would be difficult to underestimate the impact that self-managed super has on competition between super funds – with both SMSF and non-SMSF members being the winners.

Here’s an investment puzzle. Why do investors often underperform the managed investment funds holding their money?

With the waves of baby boomers now nearing or entering retirement, it is hardly surprising that the ranks of retired super members is rapidly growing. Yet the extent of that growth may surprise you.

Are you among the increasing number of investors wanting to create a widely-diversified portfolio based largely on low-cost, index-tracking exchange traded funds (ETFs)?

Investors shouldn’t overlook that there are two components to sharemarket returns – dividend yield and capital gains (or losses).

Trust can be tested in many ways.

Numbers can at times take on a significance way beyond the actual data point they represent.

Behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman – who teaches us to control our damaging behavioural traits to become better, more-disciplined investors – continues as a powerful force on the best-seller lists as 2017 draws to a close.

The financial markets’ low volatility underscores investors’ conviction that the long-term global economic trends of modest growth and tepid inflation will also define shorter-term cycles. But risks lie in mistaking the trend for the cycle.

An estimated 59,000 self-managed super funds (SMSFs) have unmet needs for advice on estate planning.

It seems hard to believe that the first iPhone was released just over a decade ago.

We probably all remember during those long difficult car trips as children repeatedly saying such irritating things to our parents as: "When do we get there?". Perhaps adding to reinforce the point, "I knew we would never get there".

Starting a new job can be equal parts high stress and high excitement.

Success attracts supporters, detractors and imitators – just ask any premiership-winning sports team.

Behavioural economist Professor Richard Thaler won the 2017 Nobel Prize for economics this month and intends to spend his million-dollar-plus prize money "as irrationally as possible".

It’s been a generation since inflation last ravaged Australia, with costs for ordinary consumer goods rising on a seemingly daily basis. Indeed, in the wake of the global financial crisis, inflation in many countries has been lower than policymakers would like.

Independent exchange-traded fund (ETF) researcher Deborah Fuhr describes ETFs as the most democratic investment product to her knowledge.

The very high level of debt-free home ownership among current Australian retirees helps counterbalance their low average super savings, undoubtedly contributing to any sense of financial security.

A thought-provoking exercise for self-managed super fund (SMSF) trustees is to compare their fund’s asset allocation to those of the balanced portfolios of Australia’s biggest super funds.

How has your investment portfolio performed over the past 10 years since the onset of the global financial crisis (GFC)?

It was George Bernard Shaw who coined the phrase ‘youth is wasted on the young’. In Australia today, it seems the young may be wasting their investing youth.

Self-managed funds rank among the longest and biggest supporters of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).

The popularity of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) has rapidly grown over the past 10 years in Australia and overseas – a decade that begun ominously enough with the beginning of the global financial crisis (GFC).

What are the hardest aspects of running your self-managed super fund (SMSF)? Are they the seemingly ever-changing rules, the paperwork and administration or the challenge of choosing where to invest?

The internet has certainly given investors much more immediate access to information about their portfolios, investment research and investment markets. It has also enabled us to conduct immediate online transactions.

A landmark stage in the life of a self-managed super fund is when at least one of its members moves from the accumulation phase to retirement phase.

A recent Vanguard research paper opens with a challenging question that investors are increasingly asking themselves: How should I allocate my investment capital across index and active investments?

Low-cost exchange traded funds allow investors to maintain a laser-like focus on returns.

Understandably, investors tend to focus on the positive sides of compounding.

As the one million-plus members of Australia’s 600,000-plus self-managed super funds know, SMSFs must prepare and regularly update an investment strategy.