A: I think you should be mindful of the currency because the USD appears to be in a long-term downtrend. Driving this is a ballooning US budget deficit, extraordinary growth in US money supply due to quantitative easing by the US Federal Reserve, and near zero interest rates. Medium term, I see the Australian dollar appreciating against the US dollar.

You can address the currency risk by investing in “hedged” product options (for example, IHVV rather than IVV; or MHG rather than Magellan’s MGE), or alternatively, considering active managers who select globally focused stocks (rather than stocks focused on the US domestic economy) and hence will  benefit from a weaker US dollar.