Peter Spann "Cash Flow Workshop"

The property development materials handed out by MY at the workshop were very good. They are comprehensive. I also bought a book by Ron Forlee on Property Development which covers similar issues. I lent MY's materials to friends in Melbourne who are going to do the development. They live in Melbourne, own an IP and wanted to knock down the old house and build 2 townhouses. They already had plans drawn up for council's approval. They said the materials gave them some insights into the development process and requirements.

If I were to do the development, having read the materials I probably would give it a go in the project management (but it had to be where I live, I cannot do it from a distance) - however, I would still need to assemble a team of experts to advise me on technical issues. I spoke to 2 guys (who are builders) at the workshop who had done a number of developments themselves, but came to the workshop to learn more.

 

Thoughts on the Peter Spann seminar

Thanks for the reply pthm

So what did everyone [who went] think about the Peter Spann seminar last night?

It was the first time I've heard him talk and I actually think he was pretty good. I already knew a lot of what he said, but it was more about hearing his reasoning that helped me rethink my strategies.

His stats supporting that commercial property growth outperforms residential were interesting (not that I've confirmed them yet). I've said this before, but because it isn't in books, most can't possibly believe it's true (talking about the SS forum here). There were a couple of other pearls... so, money well spent I think.

I don't mind his approach; I like the idea of logical asset allocation and thinking actively. Some of you on here really seem to have that nailed. I want to get to that point that I am confident in undertaking research, am able to find the info I want and able to make a confident decision based on good analysis. More reading and more learning I guess... oh, and more acting contrary to SS forum members

 

-T-

I thought it was very good value. Lots of interesting ideas. I had heard Peter present some of them before (on cd) but it was the first time I had seen him speak. I was pretty impressed , he is a very good presenter . The product certainly has appeal because of the 100% finanace, capital guarantee and access to Peter's own very successful equity strategies. I noticed a lot of the fees and charges were not mentioned during the presentation and on reading the handout there are quite a few (hopefully most of them are already accounted for in the Net return figures mentioned).

cheers
Gazza

PS sorry we didn't catch up last night, I have sent you a PM though

 

Went to the Sydney presentation today and I thought it was great value.

I'd emailed I would be attending and never got a response. Turned up this morning expecting to pay my $40 or whatever and they couldn't find my name so they gave me free entry. Excellent value.

On top of that they offered a free 3-hour Investor Update presentation next month. Also good value.

It was an interesting presentation and if you got nothing else out of it, there was the constant reminder to develop your strategy, know it backwards and apply it. Obvious I know, but a reminder never hurts.

Peter hardly took a breath for 3 hours and then the Macquarie Bank spoke about a joint structured product they are offering for another 40 minutes.

I have no doubt Peter could have spoken for another 3 hours non stop to this particular audience of about 750 but he had another one coming in in another hour to do it all over again! Apparently they have about 6500 booked in for this series of talks. Wouldn't want to get a sore throat easy!

 

To the guys (and girls) that attended - what do you think of his new enhanced income fund? Gazza - you mentioned there were allot of fee's, do you have any other details - was it the same as the other Macquarie newton type products, along the lines of 1.5% MER with a performance fee as well? Was there any other details of how the capital protection is provided. I'm attending the perth event but its still 5 days away...

 

The Protection Fee was 0.20% pa of the Capital Protected Amount paid annually in advance.

 

To add to what Alan mentioned, the capital protection is done via a put option I believe. Normally capital protection is provided by taking a major portion of your invested amount and putting it into a safe investment like bonds so that over the term of the investment it end ups up back at what you invested initially. The disadvantage of this method is that you only have a portion of your investment actually working for you. Macquarie's method means you have pretty much all your investment working for you from day 1.

In terms of the fees, the fund is made up of 2 products, one( a buy write option strategy) has been around for a number of years and is performing at around 14%pa net of all fees, the other is a dividend run up strategy which has only been traded internally by macquarie for 11 months, so they are unable to provide returns at this stage. I am assuming that the majority of the fees mentioned in the brochure have already been paid before you get the 14% return. The ones that are left would be the entry fee of 3% ( I wonder if Freeman Fox will rebate this? and the capital protection fee of 0.2% of the amount invested.

The other fees mentioned are:
base management fee 1.1%
underlying fund base management fee 1.15% or 1.55% (depending on the fund)
trailing fee 0.233%
performance fee 20% of positive returns but it then says a rebate of 25% of the performance fee applies
placement incentive recovry fee 0.5%
operational costs 0.11%
advisor fee ongoing 0.233%
loan (if taken) 0.25%

Who know if all the above are already paid by the time they say the return is 14%pa?

 

yeah 14% net of fee's aint anything flash for the macquarie buy-write fund... the strong market is hurting them - most of the options they're writing must be getting executed. An asx200 tracking index fund would have given you just under 30% over the last 12 months whereas Macquarie's website states the returns of the buy-write fund as 13.8% gross. In fact its even lagging the asx buy-write index over the last 12 months which they seem to be using as a performance measure. (I wonder if there are any index-type funds running off this asx buy-write index or if its just a marketing exercise to get people interested in ETO's?)

It will be interesting how the dividend run-up strategy works - it sounds very familiar to the Newton Special Events Fund that Macquarie are already running which returned 9.74% over the last 12 months - a 50/50 combination of the two would have given 11.77% but as always "Past Performance has No Bearing on Future Performance".

These strategies are probably a good way of reducing volatility in your portfolio - we need to see how well they do in flat or downward trending markets.

Jason.

 

What can I say, but wow.

Find the time to hear what Peter Spann has to say. I got more good general advise and more motivation for my $48 (and 4 hours of time) than from anywhere else before.

Oh, and the income fund sounds good too !

 

I went along to the workshop in Brisbane today and found it very disappointing. I did not learn one new thing that I hadn't aready picked up from the forums or from hearing Steve speak.

Peter is a good public speaker, but today's workshop kept getting off track with stories on things totally unrelated to what we were there to hear.

The Macquarie income found sounds interesting, just seems a lot of fees involved.

 

Is anyone here with some spare time able to decipher these fees? Not just to gauge viability of this fund, but for any fund. For example, 20% of positive returns, does that literally mean 20% for positive returns? That sounds a bit outrageous, not that I know what to compare that to.

 

the other macquarie newton funds have a 20% perofrmance fee as well. It sounds like in this case under certain circumstances that only charge a 15% fee (ie 25% rebate). The performance fee would most likely come into action for out-performance of the S&P/ASX200 subject to a high-water mark as per the other Mac funds...