October 2020 'To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize’ - Voltaire
Friday 2nd October 2020
Leader of the free world Donald Trump this afternoon tweeted he’s contracted COVID19. It’s so bad he needed a test to confirm he and his wife now have it after coming into contact with one of his staff that had it.
xxxx messaged letting me know that and the ASX dropped over 1% upon the news. So I added to my Australian holdings. Lowering the cost base never gets old.
Tuesday 6th October 2020
Australian Treasurer tonight handed down the federal budget. It’s been delayed six months due to COVID. I’m not going to cover it because ‘the economy’ doesn’t have to correlate or impact ‘our personal economy’.
They can and should be separate, especially now.
Thursday 8th October 2020
Listened to the latest Richards Report podcast today. His guest (the founder of Six Parks investment company) shared the results of Perpetuals recent investor survey of the top three issues that keep investors up at night.
- COVID
- Their physical and mental health
- Their financial wellbeing
Ignoring COVID and it’s health and wealth we’re left with. One of the massively under appreciated things about business vehicles like USANA is it’s a potential solution for both these aspects of our lives.
It’s a business that doesn’t have to ‘cost’ us health wise.
Talk too enough people who’ve built businesses and/or have been employees who’ve worked hard for years and you’ll no doubt see the scale of health and financial position being way out of balance.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Friday 9th October 2020
I posted a published case study article on the impact of Vitamin D supplementation on upper respiratory tract challenges in a private Facebook group I have for some of my customers. A ‘pop up’ with ‘fact check’ and ‘Facebook Science’ appeared, for vitamin C…
The pop up said I could ignore it, however if I continued to ignore it, FB would ensure the content doesn’t reach members of the group.
Firstly, it’s influencing users behaviour (watch The Social Dilemma on Netflix if you haven’t yet to understand this) and now its influencing information.
The funny part is FB was 'fact checking' the article for vitamin C, but the article was about vitamin D…
The scary part is FB is censoring information about a healthy micronutrient that’s cheap, safe and effective for general health and wellbeing. In fact, a good portion of the developed word is deficient in vitamin D, the benefits of optimal vitamin D levels are ENORMOUS.
In Australia we’re lucky to live in a country where we can write a letter saying whatever we want and post it to a friend.
In Australia we’re lucky to live in a country where we can write an email saying whatever we want and send it to a friend.
In Australia in the year 2020 we cannot write a FB post in a private group saying what happened (especially around healthy habits) and share it with friends.
Interesting times…
Wednesday 14th October 2020
If you’ve not seen The Social Dilemma yet, please do yourself a favour and check it out on Netflix.
Expanding on FB’s censoring of valuable information in my FB group a couple of weeks back, I heard today FB are censoring all anti-vaccine media. This has got to be the beginning of the end for these platforms.
To be clear, this isn’t about vaccines, it’s about a deliberate choice to censor. What else are they censoring? What else will they censor? Who’s deciding what’s a fact? How much influence does the paradigms and virtues signalling of Silicon Valley have on FB and Twitter and therefore the world?
And more frightening what’s stopping FB or Twitter from electronic character assassination?
Voltaire wrote, ‘to find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise’. Timeless.
Thursday 15th October 2020
Some good insights today from a couple of my preferred LIC’s AGM’s, mainly dividends are expected to be down again in the next 12 months and this COVID challenge is going to take many years to fully recover from. Longer than most people think, especially as people are weaned off Job Keeper payments through March 2021, deferred home loans start resuming payments and business owners decided if they buckle up or thrown in the towel.
Quick update on Victoria, 73,000 jobs have been lost in just August and September as lockdowns continue. I think this is week 14 or 15.
I cannot believe this is happening in Australia in the year 2020. Even the World Health Organisation has (finally) stated lock downs are not a solution for COVID.
We sure are living in interesting times… I wish nothing but the best for the people of Victoria. I have family living there myself. The stress and mental health challenges have been and will be off the charts for some time.
Friday 16th October 2020
Dividend day for three indexes today. This passive income is going towards buying more units in each holding.
I cannot stress the value of developing solid leveraged and/or passive income streams. It’s an absolute game changer.
How income is generated is far more important (to me at least) than how much income I generate. A few valuable questions:
- Does it serve/add value to people?
- Am I doing meaningful work I enjoy?
- What is the cost to me (my life, health, mental state, etc) generating this income?
- If I stop working now, how much income will I continue to receive long term/forever?
Passive income doesn’t have to come from dividends. Some companies don’t pay them, instead reinvesting their profits back into growing the business, meaning your equity in that company grows and you can sell periodically to manufacture an income stream if/when you need or want the income. It's really six in one, half a dozen the other.
Over the past couple of years I’ve noticed a great trend in the physical preparation/strength and conditioning professions of some practitioners focused on levelling up financially.
In 2009 I wrote an article titled ‘Time, Money and the Physical Preparation Coach’ essentially stepping through my thought processes and the hurdles I faced as a physical prep coach moving away from solely trading my time for money.
These hurdles first became apparent to me in mid 2003 when my brother and best friends chose to move to the United Kingdom for a few years to live and see Europe. Of course I too could have gone, but being a self employed coach with sporting contracts in place going away at that point of my career wasn’t happening.
Instead of being bitter, I decided to get better and started reading widely. Topics including economics, the Internet, wealth, accounting, investing, self-development and well, you get the picture.
In 2004 I started an online business part time, that resonated with me and by 2007 I was making close too as much part time, as I was working full time coaching. In late 2007 I bought my first property (a month or two later the GFC happened… how bad was my timing!). I missed out on two other properties before buying the one I did, because they sold for way over the asking price! Live and learn.
By 2009 I’d had five years of operating my online business and over a decade of coaching under my belt and felt I’d have enough personal experiences to put pen to paper for the first time.
The reality is the article isn’t solely for physical prep coaches; it’s for anyone who trades their time for money. Receptionist, massage therapist, truck driver, accountant, surf instructor, dentist.
I've received so much positive feedback from the article over the years. If you've not read it yet, you can read it here. I'd love you're feedback.
Monday 19th October 2020
Despite cash only representing 25% of all transactions in Australia, the RBA is printing $100 dollar notes at triple the usual rate as people stash cash at home. Interest rates 0.25% and likely dropping lower in November, there’s no shortage of people preferring a cash stash to money doing nothing in the bank.
Plus, if there a bank bail in or something similar, the cash stash will come in real handy.
The UFC lightweight champion Khabib said it best: ‘The intelligent person is preparing for a war in peaceful times’.
Monday 26th October 2020
Old school Australian LIC xxx reported today stating they were probably too cautious during the COVID crash. The unprecedented levels of government stimulus and intervention in regular business (pausing of mortgage payments, incredible renters rights impacting landlord investors, business allowed to trade insolvent, tax changes, etc.) perhaps caught them off guard.
Fortunately they have no debt, dry powder to invest, participated in a bunch of capital raising in the past six months and are focused on generating steady solid cash flow for investors who’s preference is dividends over selling shares.
Thursday 29th October 2020
ANZ bank reported full year results today. The part that caught my attention was the CEO’s virtue signalling on climate policy. All of a sudden the bank is seeking to act as a moral compass for society. What a joke. Perhaps, instead focus on getting some decent returns for shareholders and great service to your customers.
Saturday 31st October 2020
Volatility in the market is back leading up to the US presidential election early next week. Earlier this week Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet (Google and YouTube) and Twitter reported their third quarter results.
Amazon’s numbers were mind blowing, up $26 billion dollar or 37% from the same quarter last year! YouTube advertising income pulled in $5 billion up 32% from a year ago. Facebook revenue up $21 billion from a year ago or 22% increase. Interestingly FB user number increased everywhere except in the USA, where user numbers decreased by around one million.
With all the censorship around FB and Twitter coming to light recently, not to mention mainstream news media outlets (think Channel 2, 7, 9 etc. here in Australia and CNN, CNBC, etc. in the USA) I feel all of these platforms are on a long slippery slope for the misinformation and biases they project on society.
It’s no surprise, long form podcasting is gaining market share. Think about the US presidential debate. We’re talking deciding on the leader of the free world and they have just two minutes to answer a question on around six topics in a 90min TV segment.
I support the idea of having them both on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, having Joe moderate it, young Jamie fact checking their answers and letting it go until it’s done.
In other news, Queenslanders re-elected the Labour Government for another four years based on a campaign of (unnecessary) fear around COVID and boarder barriers.