John Roskam from the Institute of Public Affairs highlights the failures of the fourth estate to hold our politicians (and other institutions) to account.
We've covered a number of important areas over the past eight months. It's always worthwhile to revisit some of the decisions taken to see how the fare through the passage of time.
Sometimes luck is better than good planning and there has been a measure of both in respect to the crypto currency investments. You may recall I purchased a basket of crypto coins with a heavy weighting toward Bitcoin in July 2020. Almost immediately the portfolio began to rise.
After rising as much as 30% by September it was only up 2.8%. Things have changed a lot since then because Bitcoin and many of the others leapt in price.
Bitcoin reached over AUD $50,000 in price. This is where a bit of luck came in. The portfolio was p well over 100% and I knew I would need some money for a significant purchase in February. I sold the most of the minor coins and half of the Bitcoin holdings at close to their recent highs.
This gave me my original capital back and a healthy profit ( to pay the tax!). It also left me with an investment in the crypto space that has effectively cost me nothing. I call that a free ride.
Here's how it stands now.
Crypto 1: +100.1% Crypto 2: +173.5%
These figures are automatically calculated and updated in real time at Easy Crypto which is the firm I used to purchase the portfolio.
Remember, these gains are based on the original purchase price but in effect the current holdings cost me less than zero.
Intermittent Fasting
Back in June, at the suggestion of Premium Member Geoff and Annette, I began intermittent fasting. This is the practice of not consuming calories for a defined period every day. In other words, you eat your meals within a time window.
I must confess that I am not as consistent as I should be. Sometimes my eating window is 12 hours and other times I restrict it to 8 hours. I have even done a 24 hour fast - which was surprisingly energising.
Following this program has been no hardship at all. I've still enjoyed my food, wine and good times while actually losing weight. It has been a slow process but that is probably the healthiest way to trim up. Over the past seven months I have dropped around 10kg and am getting close to my goal weight.
I don't doubt it would have lost more weight if I'd given up the 'hazard' foods which seem to always have an appeal - the chips and chocolate that so often demand attention 😉
The next couple of months I'll be breaking that sugar and simple carbohydrate habit which I am sure will deliver significant health and wellbeing benefits.
Exercise
My wife says I am doing all the things that I wanted to do previously but couldn't due to political demands. She is right.
One year ago I began self defence training which is great fun and develops practical skills as well as fitness benefits. I also started going to pilates. That has been an amazing experience.
Pilates looks so easy but it can be very arduous, depending on the class you attend. The benefits to my strength and flexibility have been excellent and delivers a far different result to other types of resistance training.
In short, pilates has proven to be a beneficial and thoroughly enjoyable form of organised exercise for this 51 year old.
Stocks
Hedging our bets through the US election proved to be a wise course. As I was unsure about how the result might be received by investors ( too many unknown variables) it was prudent to have a defensive position in event of rises or falls.
We quickly closed the short position at a small loss and rode the upside where markets seem to have stabilised. There is still a great deal of risk in the stock market but as governments around the world are printing s much money, it is reasonable to presume that real asset prices will continue to rise.
You can also expect inflation to reappear, even if the economy is quite listless.
Cory Bernardi is the author of seven books and has been a member of the Australian rowing team, a publican, an investment portfolio manager and spent nearly 14 years as an Australian Senator.
The Prime Minister has a delicate balancing act ahead of him. He needs to muscle up to China while re-establishing important trade markets for our products.
