Friday 1^st October 2021

The market is down close to 3.5% so far today. The headline tonight was: ‘$47 billion dollar sell off’. Shares are doing their thing going up and down as they always have and always will.

 

Tuesday 5^th October 2021

Talking too xxx on the weekend about his challenges getting caught up in the fear of missing out (FOMO) with real estate prices sky rocketing and him feeling the stress comparing his position to (what he perceives) are other peoples positions.

He’s recently started his own business going from employee to business owners and is doing well. Profitable in his first four quarters of business, a great achievement. But he easily gets caught in up in comparison.

This is a futile game. ‘Comparison is the thief of all joy’ is a biblical quote that comes to mind. Keeping up with the imaginary Jones’ is a fast track to a terrible place.

Earl Nightingale in his classic audio The Strangest Secret (click here to listen) defined success as ‘the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal’. That is, success is whatever it is YOU decide is ideal and you’re progress towards that. Simple.

My view on this is we have more material wealth now than at any point in the last 100 years, in developed countries like Australia. Just look at the cars in car parks or houses today and contrast them to just 30 years ago. There’s been a significant increase in the standard of living, technology advancements aside.

While at the same time:

- Divorce rates are one in two

- Mental health/depression is an epidemic and on the rise

- One in two people are overweight or obese. Diseases of abundance.

- Drugs and alcohol abuse to escape/numb feelings are through the roof

Life is a single player game. Our happiness, peace of mind, fulfilment is solely up to each of us. Nothing external will fulfil us. Happiness is an internal game. Naval Ravikant views on this are worth looking up. As are many eastern books and philosophies on these topics.

I’m told there’s research indicating after around $80k/year income no significant increase in happiness is reported.

When I’m surfing owning $10mill vs $10 is of no concern.

When I’m training, owning $10mill vs $10 in is of no concern.

When I’m with close friends owning $10mill vs $10 is of no concern.

When I’m reading/learning owning $10mill vs $10 is of no concern.

When I’m coaching owning $10mill vs $10 is of no concern.

I get lost in time for most of my days. It’s said being present is a gift. I agree.

What get’s you lost in time?

Does getting money out of the way and being financially independent help in life? Absolutely! Hence this Project Passive diary! Though not at the expense of our health, peace of mind, relationships and interests, at least this is the case for me.

Money without freedom is not wealth either. A sick person has only one wish, while a healthy person has one thousand wishes.

Ridding the ego of what other people think, of playing status games and of virtue signalling alone add enormous peace to our lives. We wouldn’t let a person walk through our house with mud all over their feet, yet every day we let people walk through our minds with dirty feet… why? Don’t let anyone live rent-free in your head – ever!

Kick em out! But even better, don’t let them in, in the first place.

Back to investing and right on cue, the ‘market is about the crash’ folk come out of the woodwork with the current volatility.

 

Thursday 14^th October 2021

The market has been going up and down as it always has and always will.

Listened to an interesting podcast about active investing and beating the market. It’s a valuable, check it out here

I was talking to xxx about it and he casually said ‘you’re beating the market. What’s the big deal?’ I’d not realised nor even thought about this until he said that. (The ASX200 and the S&P500 are the markets in this case).

I’d conditioned my behaviour to the point of rarely looking at other ‘what if’ scenario's. This is NOT a claim that I can outperform the market or even know what I’m doing. Just using my own investment time frame, that’s been the case thus far and it could easily go the other way at some point in time too. I'm not oblivious to this possibility.

Crypto is on the rise again. Bitcoin is up about 75% from it’s low a few months back. My portfolio is up around 120% the last time I looked and the market overall has hit $2.5 trillion dollars for the first time ever.

 

Monday 18^th October 2021

Inflation is noticed by most people in one way or another, but understood by few. Inflation bites away at our purchasing power over time, unless we have assets and/or income that increase at a rate each year, faster than inflation increases.

The reason for this rambling is today I paid $2/litre for petrol for the first time in my life. I remember petrol being $0.30cents/litre as a kid on Ferry Road. Though it doesn’t matter if petrol is 30cents/litre or $2/litre I’ll be filling up when ever I need too. Until I get a Tesla…

In other news, it’s distribution day for the ETF’s I hold. Those distributions have been directed to buying more shares (or units technically speaking) in the ETF’s, with the goal to protect my purchasing power against inflation over time.

 

Wednesday 19^th October 2021

xxx messaged me that his second crypto coin hit $200,000USD from a $1000USD initial buy, today.

Personally I’ve had to engage some serious self-discipline the last few days to not ‘interrupt the compounding’ so to speak. A part of me wants sell some shares and re-deploy the capital and profits into a couple of existing holdings. But another part of me wants to ensure I don’t interrupt compounding. Decisions!

I’ll allocate new funds to these existing holdings moving forward and continue to hold and DRP everything else. The urges the fiddle, sell, change asset allocation, can be a real battle internally. It’s one of the reasons I share this project, to be transparent around things like this.

Also overnight in the USA at Bitcoin ETF launched with the ticker of BITO with over a billion dollars flowing into it on day one. It’s tracks BTC futures I believe.

 

Saturday 23^rd October 2021

There’s a trump media or social media platform allegedly in the works. A SPAC launched on Friday in the USA (last night here) that listed at $10 and finished the day at $157. Nearly a 16 banger in one day!

Allegedly Trump is worth $20 billion as a result of this. Reddit’s had something to do with this I believe.

This new social media platform called ‘Truth’ will be de-centralized (no censoring) and a mix between Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and the like. Fingers crossed it gets off the ground. I’m not enjoying the censorship and muting of free speech into today’s online world.

 

Tuesday 26^th October 2021

Over night the S&P 500 hit another all time high. Tesla jumped 12.5% ($115) in one day, based on its 3^rd quarter results.

xxx decided to invest a further $40,000 dollars into shares today. I helped her with the mechanics of the buying process on her app. DRP’s already set up and she literally won’t look at it for the next few years. The same as she’s literally not looked at her exiting investments the past few years. That’s probably the best thing anyone can do behaviourally in the long run.

The Rational Reminder podcast had another fantastic episode this week. It’s probably worth subscribing too on your preferred podcast platform. Saves me continually linking to them here. 

Yesterday xxx called telling me about a crypto exchange that’s paying between 8% and 18% interest on US dollars. It appears the interest rate is loosely tied to the BTC price. The higher it goes the higher the interest paid goes. A friend we both know and trust has done the due diligence and he has $2 million dollars in there and received $60,000 interest for two months. He started with smaller amounts, withdrew money and interest at different times to test it out and is having a great experience.

I’m going to learn more about it and dip my toe in with way less that $2 million dollars…

Finally, xxx texted me an article this morning about Mastercard allowing all banks on its network to provide Bitcoin services. This is another positive piece of mainstream adoption. Add this to Visa already doing big things and PayPal being massively into crypto, particularly in the US and the there’s a clear trend happening…

 

Wednesday 27^th October 2021

The S&P 500 hit another record high close over night. And that crypto coin of my friend now has a value of just under $300,000USD he told me today. Mind blowing…

 

Saturday October 30^th 2021

The S&P 500 closed over night at another record high, as did the NASDAQ. Large company earnings and reporting in the US have exceeded expectations on the whole.

September wasn’t a great month for shares while October has been a solid month for international shares while the crypto market continues to grow in value and expand into mainstream platforms.