Let's get rich. Or at least, let's stop pretending you can't.
That is the energy behind the new wave of NZ investing apps. Sharesies, Hatch, and Kernel turned the share market from something Kiwis read about in the Weekend Herald into something you can open on the couch between school pickup and dinner. Fractional shares of Apple or Nvidia from $5. An S&P 500 ETF bought in 90 seconds. The full US market in your phone, in NZD, anytime, anywhere.
The barrier to buying shares is gone. A generation of NZ households that never owned anything outside KiwiSaver and a house can now own a slice of the most productive companies in the world. What was once gatekept by stockbrokers and large minimums is now open to anyone with $5 and a phone.
The catch is that easy access isn't the same as good outcomes. The same app that lets you contribute $200 a fortnight to an S&P 500 fund also lets you punt on a single US tech stock at 11pm. Both are "investing." Only one of them tends to make households wealthier over 20 years. Let's talk about the risks and pitfalls soon — first let's compare the most common platforms.
The three platforms, in one line each
Sharesies is the on-ramp. Buy a fraction of almost anything listed in the US, NZ, or Australia from $5, in one of NZ's slickest apps, with KiwiSaver built in.
Hatch is the deep US route. Around 6,000 US shares and ETFs, traded in USD, held in your own name, with simple flat-fee pricing.
Kernel is the indexer. Low-fee NZ-PIE index funds tracking the S&P 500, global indices, and others, a KiwiSaver scheme, and a cash account, designed to be the "set and forget" core of a portfolio.
Sharesies: the everyday account
Sharesies covers US, NZ, and Australian markets through one app, plus a KiwiSaver scheme, a cash savings account, and a debit card. Over 150 US-listed companies and ETFs are available on the self-select list (Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, VOO, QQQ, ARKK), alongside the NZ and AU options and the 10 base KiwiSaver funds.
Pricing in 2026 runs on monthly plans: $3 covers $500 of buys/sells and $1,000 of auto-invest orders; $7 covers $1k and $3k; $15 covers $5k and $10k. Outside the plans, the transaction fee is 1.9% capped at $25 NZD (NZ trades), $5 USD (US), or $15 AUD (Australia)(1). The KiwiSaver scheme is a PIE, so tax is handled at your PIR and capped at 28%.
Where Sharesies earns its place: the regular small order. The fortnightly $200 into VOO, the kids' first $50 into Tesla, the auto-invest plan that runs in the background while you're at netball. Where it gets expensive: large one-off US trades, where Hatch wins on cost.
Hatch: the US growth-stock route
Hatch is the deep US market in your own name. Around 6,000 US shares and ETFs (every name on the NYSE and NASDAQ that matters), traded in USD, held in your name with a US custodian. Pricing is a $3 USD flat fee per trade under 300 shares, plus 0.5% on the NZD-USD conversion both ways(2). There is no PIE wrapper. You own the assets directly.
That last point is the important one, because of FIF.
If the original cost of your overseas shares goes over $50,000 NZD at any point during the tax year (1 April to 31 March), New Zealand's Foreign Investment Fund rules kick in(3). Below the threshold, dividends are taxed normally. Above it, you pay tax under the Fair Dividend Rate method (deemed 5% of opening value), whether the shares paid anything or not. The threshold has been $50k since 2002 and is based on cost, not current value.
Buying $200 a month of an S&P 500 ETF on Hatch for the first few years is fine. Crossing $50k cost basis is the point where most households start asking whether the same US exposure inside a PIE-wrapped Kernel S&P 500 fund would be tidier at tax time. Often it would.
Where Hatch earns its place: direct exposure to specific US names you actively want to own (a Tesla, an Nvidia, a particular sector ETF), and large single US buys where the flat fee beats the percentage. Most households don't need this. The ones who do, value it specifically.
Kernel: the indexer's core
Kernel runs around 25 NZ-PIE index funds. The flagships track the S&P 500 and global developed markets, with deeper cuts available for the NASDAQ 100, emerging markets, ESG, and thematics like clean energy. There is also a cash account (Kernel Save) and a KiwiSaver scheme. Most core funds run at 0.25% per annum; thematic and bond funds sit a little higher (0.40–0.50%)(4). The KiwiSaver scheme uses the same underlying index funds at 0.25% on core options, which Kernel reports as roughly 39% below the diversified-fund industry average.
The PIE wrapper does the heavy lifting. Tax is paid at your PIR (max 28%), the fund handles it, and FIF never enters the conversation no matter how large the US balance gets. Distributions are quarterly and can be auto-reinvested.
Where Kernel earns its place: the boring, growing core. The foundation of a share portfolio meant to track the US and global markets at the lowest possible cost for 20 years, with no thinking required.
The boring truth about returns
Back to the question the opener set up. With three apps and 6,000 US stocks on tap, what reliably builds wealth?
The research is unfashionably boring, but very straight up.
S&P's SPIVA scorecard, the standard reference on active versus passive, tracks fund managers against their benchmarks each year. In the most recent update, more than 80% of active equity funds underperformed their index benchmark over the 10 years to December 2025, in every major category(5). Four out of five professional fund managers, with research teams and Bloomberg terminals, lost to a passive S&P 500 across a decade.
Individual investors picking stocks themselves do worse. The canonical study (Barber and Odean, 2000) followed 66,465 US households at a discount broker over six years. The 20% who traded most earned 11.4% a year. The 20% who traded least earned 18.5%(6). Same market, fewer decisions, seven percentage points more return per year. Compounded for 20 years, the lower-trading group finished with several times more money.
The implication isn't "never pick a stock." Households who enjoy owning Apple or Nvidia in their own name should keep enjoying it; the cost is dispersion, not ruin. The implication is that the boring slab, the regular S&P 500 (or global index) contribution that goes in on payday and stays there, is what builds the number. Individual stock punts can be fun. The index funds are the proven best bet.
Watch the fee model, not just the fee
One more thing worth knowing before the comparison table: how each platform makes money tells you what it is quietly designed to push you toward.
Sharesies and Hatch are transaction-fee businesses. Sharesies earns 1.9% (capped) per trade outside its monthly plans; Hatch earns $3 USD per trade. Their revenue grows when users trade more often, hold more individual positions, and check the app more frequently. Kernel is an assets-under-management business; it earns 0.25% a year on whatever sits in its funds. Its revenue grows when users put more in and leave it there.
Neither model is dishonest, and both are clearly disclosed. They pull in different directions, though. A platform that earns per trade has every commercial reason to make trading feel exciting, accessible, and frequent: discovery feeds, daily movers, push notifications when a stock pops. A platform that earns on balances has every commercial reason to make contributing simple and trading feel beside the point.
Lay that next to the research from the previous section, and the tension is obvious. The design nudge of a transaction-fee app points users toward exactly the behaviour (frequent trading, individual stock picking) that costs the average individual investor about seven percentage points a year in returns(6).
Sharesies and Hatch are both excellent at what they do, and there are legitimate reasons to use both. The question for the user is whether what the app is built to encourage is the same as what builds wealth over 20 years. Often it isn't.
The cleanest defence is structural: keep the indexed core somewhere the platform earns more when you do nothing, and reserve the transaction-fee platforms for the smaller, deliberate amount you've decided to punt with.
The honest comparison
How the stack stacks up
Read across the rows with the research as the silent rule: index funds for the core, individual punts for the icing.
Kernel as the indexed core, KiwiSaver included. The big, boring foundation that gets fed every pay cycle: an S&P 500 fund, a global fund, or whatever fits the plan, all NZ-PIE so FIF stays out of the conversation. Sharesies as the everyday account for smaller regular orders, the kids' picks, and any specific US, NZ, or AU names worth holding alongside the core. Hatch, reserved for the specific US holdings you want to own directly, is sized below the FIF threshold unless you're committed to the tax workings of going over.
What sinks most households is not the platform mix. It's that they can't see the three at once. The Kernel balance is in one app, the Sharesies balance in another, the Hatch USD balance in a third (and is the one nobody looks at until tax time). Over a year or two, the funding plan drifts. The Sharesies wallet quietly gathers cash because the auto-invest got switched off in March and never came back on. The Kernel monthly that was supposed to be $1,000 is sitting at $400 because the budget changed and nobody updated it. The Hatch USD balance just sits there. Each one is a small slip. Together, they're the difference between a plan and a portfolio.
This is where SortMe comes in.
How SortMe pulls them onto one screen
SortMe connects to your bank, KiwiSaver, and investment accounts through Akahu, NZ's open-banking provider, and assembles a single wealth view across all three platforms(7).
Two pieces matter for this stack.
Net-worth screen. SortMe reads the balance of each Sharesies, Hatch, and Kernel account through Akahu and adds it to your overall net worth, in NZD, alongside bank accounts, KiwiSaver, mortgage, and property. What sits inside each account still lives in each platform. What's new is the total: the actual size of your investing pile, sitting next to the size of your mortgage and the equity in your house, in one place. That single number, and the trend over time, is the part most multi-platform households have never had.
Budget auto-allocation. SortMe is designed to help you work out where your money is going and create a framework that automates wealth-building activities. Money lands in your household account on payday. Your SortMe budget has already allocated amounts into Investing, KiwiSaver top-ups, savings, and bills, and the regular Sharesies and Kernel orders pull from the Investing bucket on schedule. The decisions happen once. The execution happens every pay cycle, whether you're paying attention or not. That is precisely the "set and forget" that the research proves works best.
As Carl Thompson, SortMe's founder, puts it: "The platforms aren't the problem. Picking the right one for the right job is easy in an afternoon. The problem is the discipline to keep funding them every pay cycle, and the visibility to know when one is out of balance. Both of those are software jobs, not willpower jobs."
The practical next step
If you're already running two or three of these platforms, the high-value move isn't switching providers. It's getting them onto one screen, sizing the US-versus-global-versus-NZ allocation deliberately, and putting the funding on rails. That is what compounds over the life of a portfolio: not which logo got the order, but the consistency of the order itself.
See your full investing picture across Sharesies, Hatch, Kernel, KiwiSaver, bank, and property on one screen. Try SortMe for $1 (7 days) at sortme.com.
Sources
- Pricing and plans, Sharesies — sharesies.nz/pricing
- Hatch pricing, Hatch — hatchinvest.nz/pricing
- Foreign investment funds (FIFs), Inland Revenue — ird.govt.nz
- Kernel pricing, Kernel Wealth — kernelwealth.co.nz/pricing
- SPIVA U.S. Year-End 2025 Scorecard, S&P Dow Jones Indices — spglobal.com/spdji/spiva
- Barber, B. M., & Odean, T. (2000). Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors. Journal of Finance, 55, 773–806.
- Akahu — New Zealand's Open Banking Platform, Akahu — akahu.nz
