Punters' pick of the sharemarket

Before, the two main options were to invest in an unlisted unit trust, or to buy and sell shares directly.

The unlisted trust could either be of the active type, such as those run by BT Funds Management, Fisher Funds and ING, or passive funds, like TeNZ from the NZ Stock Exchange, AMP Capital's Passive Share fund or the MidNZ fund.

Now there is a third option, which is in some ways a cross between the two - the listed investment company.

Many readers will have noticed that this week two new listed investment companies - Colville Equities and Salvus Investments - have been rolled out for their first public inspection. An earlier offering, the Kingfish fund, hit the showroom several months ago and is now doing well, after raising nearly $60 million from punters.

These aren't the first such investment companies. The Britain-based New Zealand Investment Trust has been around for years and has just over $60 million under management. The trouble is, it hasn't had a high profile among investors and its performance has been mixed over the years.

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