Letters: SMSF trustees, buying Australian equities and small cap success

SMSF trustees

I have a grasp of the need for members of an SMSF to be trustees and I am also aware that there may be only one member of an SMSF if there is another trustee (e.g. a family member). However, I have not seen anything on the ATO site that specifically prohibits having more than one family member as trustees, but not members. What do you think?

Mike Levy

Editor’s response: According to this helpful CommSec information sheet, funds with a single member and individual trustees the member need to be: “one of only two trustees and … not an employee of the other trustee (unless they are related).” This differs for corporate trustees however.

Keeping things local

Some current and former subscribers who are members of the Australian Shareholders Association have noticed a trend towards what we would call technical articles more suited to institutional or advanced investors. We appreciate easy-to-understand information that meets our needs. Many of us are 70 who have been investing for decades, and overwhelmingly in Australian equities and super. Investment overseas just does not appeal to us, for various reasons, and yet receives a lot of coverage.

We recently discussed Eureka Report at one of our discussion groups – about 30 people. Some had become quite negative and were not going to renew their subscriptions.

D Paech

Is it magic?

Every magician knows that the hand out front is watched, while other hand can get on the serious business of fooling the audience. I get the impression that the European leaders are trying something similar. All there public announcements go nowhere. My question to you guys, is there something going on behind all the "show" or are they really as ineffective as they appear to be?

D Hodgson

New format navigation

I have waited for a little time to pass before I commented on the new format. However I must say I think it is nowhere as good or user friendly as the old format. Under the old format, when you got to the end of a story there was a tab "return to the top". There you were back with a list of today's stories and off you go. Now you get to the end of the story and where do you go? Scroll back up and to the side are a range of options, but which are today's stories? Occasionally I am asked to check that I am a registered subscriber. All in all it’s taking much longer to read. Could you please look at tweaking it and making it more user-friendly?

Peter Molloy

Small cap successes

I was interested in your article about small caps.  It seems to me that there are quite a few with good franking credit dividends that slip under the radar because they are too small.

Do you have any views on Data#3 (6.4% yield), HGL (12.4%) and Tamawood (10.8%)? All of which I have had for some time, and am happy with their performance.

C Mayor

Editor’s response: A quick look at some of Michael Feller’s old ‘under the radar’ columns finds a positive view of HGL last year, but ASG Group preferred in IT services to Data#3.