Check out this new building…
Looks a BIT like one of the evil empire’s Star Destroyers from Star Wars.
Which is fitting…
Because it’s the brand-new AUSTRALIAN TAX OFFICE HQ…
15 Sydney Avenue in Canberra.
$323 million to lease it for 15 years.
Another $125 million just to fit it out.
Nearly half a billion dollars. For one building.
Guess who’s paying?
That’s right.
YOU.
Funded…without consent…
…by Aussies squeezed harder with every budget.
In the past year alone…decisions made from within these here walls have hit you from every angle:
This isn’t about chasing criminals from a shiny new HQ.
It’s about going after Australians who followed the rules…
…and waking up to find that those rules have CHANGED.
Now walk 500m down the road…
To where those rules are written.
Parliament House.
This is the central nervous system.
Every new rule change that hits your share portfolio, your trust, your retirement pot, your property assets…starts here first.
And on 12 May 2026…another one dropped.
Negative gearing.
The strategy hundreds of thousands of Australians built their property plans around — ALSO quietly redrawn.
Buy the wrong type of property after a date most people will never remember…
…and the deductions you were counting on are GONE.
Not for everyone.
Not all at once.
Just enough to remind you who controls the game.
You didn’t vote on it.
You didn’t see it coming.
It was decided in one square kilometre in Canberra.
That’s the system.
One building enforces.
The other one rewrites the playing field whenever it suits them.
But here’s what they can’t legislate.
There is a way to stop playing a game where the rules change after you’ve made your moves.
A way to step outside it.
James Woodburn
My name is James Woodburn.
I’m the publisher of Fat Tail Investment Research.
Since 2005, we’ve done something rare in this country.
We find the most contrarian, unconventional financial minds — in Australia and beyond — and put their best ideas in front of everyday Australians.
No bank owns us.
No institution funds us.
And that independence matters.
It’s why we can say what others won’t.
Why we’ve been early on ideas that later became obvious.
And why…20 years on…more Australians are turning to us for guidance.
So why bring this to you now?
Because we’ve never felt more urgency around a single message.
Not political. Not alarmist.
Practical.
See…
There’s a widening gap between what the system promises…
…and what it actually delivers.
People are working harder than ever…
…and falling further behind.
Most can feel it. Few can explain it.
WE can.
Most importantly…
We can show you what to do about it.
Because right now…a small group of Australians have already made a different move.
They’ve stopped relying on the system…
…and started building wealth OUTSIDE it.
In the next hour, you’ll see exactly how.
And you’ll meet someone who did it first.
Back in 2013, he made a decision most people thought was crazy.
Today, it looks anything but.
He’s not a politician.
Not a banker.
Not selling a property course or a crypto scheme.
He’s just someone who chose a different path…
…and PROVED IT WORKS.
I’ll hand you over now to Brian Chu…
…who’s going to show you exactly how he did it…
…and walk you through his three-part GO YOUR OWN WAY blueprint.
BRIAN W.B CHU:
Brian Chu
Let’s get straight to the point.
In the next hour…I’m going to show you a specific…step-by-step blueprint designed for building real wealth…in a system that keeps changing the rules AFTER you’ve already made your move.
By the time we’re done…you’re going to understand something most Australians never figure out.
Not because they’re stupid. But because nobody ever shows them the full picture.
You’re going to see exactly why the conventional financial playbook — the one your parents followed, the one your accountant probably still recommends — is producing worse and worse results…
…for people who do everything right.
And more importantly…you’re going to walk away with a multi-layer blueprint designed for building wealth in a completely different way.
Not by ESCAPING the system — but by positioning yourself so that whatever it does next…you’re ready for it.
It’s not a theory and it’s not a forecast.
It’s what I’ve actually been doing with my own money and my own family’s money since 2013.
When you understand how each layer builds on the last…you’ll see the market differently to almost every other investor out there.
To understand why this blueprint has worked though…YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND WHERE IT CAME FROM.
AND WHY THIS IS PERSONAL TO ME…
My parents did everything right.
One income. Careful with money. A few smart investments. And from that — a home, a family, a bit of travel, security…
…and a future to look forward to without fear.
I assumed the same was waiting for me. Same rules, same result.
I moved to Australia from Hong Kong in 1989. Studied hard. Built a career and did all the things you’re supposed to do.
By any objective measure I’ve OUTPERFORMED my parents.
Better qualifications. Higher net worth.
I can afford my guilty pleasure hobby of fine wine. Family holidays.
I speak on a popular financial news service almost every other week.
I recently bought our family home (no bank loan necessary).
And yet…
I watch the life my parents and many Australians like you built…
…receding further from reach…with every passing year.
Not because we did anything wrong. But because:
In the fine print of government budget papers.
In increasingly stretched household budgets.
In promises YOU banked on…being steadily broken.
And in legislative amendments most people will never read…
…and weren’t meant to…
If YOU’VE built something up…
…a business, real estate, a retirement nest egg, a share portfolio, some kind of set-up you leave to your kids — you must already know something feels off.
Returns that should be compounding aren’t.
Costs that should be manageable aren’t.
AI hitting us like a freight train.
Goals that looked within reach 10 years ago constantly moving.
That’s not bad luck. That’s not inflation being temporarily awkward.
I know that might seem over the top.
But let me give you real examples of what’s happening…
And as I walk you through these…I want you to notice something.
Every one of these ‘NEW RULES’ points in the same direction.
More of your wealth. More of your future. Quietly redirected — by people who are very good at making it look fair and routine.
There’s a reason I stopped trying to work within a system that’s being rewritten against me.
I formulated a different way to play this game.
And when I found it…I committed to it completely.
I went my own way.
And I’m going to share this blueprint with YOU now.
Because I really do think…in 2026…playing by their rules isn’t a strategy anymore. It’s a humiliation ritual to strip you bare.
But first — the new rules you now have to deal with…
People in Canberra have decided the wealth you’ve accumulated over a lifetime of doing the right things…
…is their resource.
A pool of capital. Something to be nudged. And taxed. And redirected…and managed…on your behalf.
For the good of the nation.
You’ve heard the language.
A stronger, fairer retirement system…where everyone contributes their fair share and ordinary Australians are protected.
It’s designed to sound reasonable.
But look at what’s actually happening.
Not the press releases…or the budget night talking points. The actual text of the actual law.
What you’re looking at here is something called Division 296.
A couple of years ago, the government introduced what they called a MODEST ADJUSTMENT…to the tax concessions available to high-balance retirement accounts.
They set the threshold at three million dollars.
And talked about it as a measure targeting the ultra-wealthy.
Here’s what they didn’t say.
In its original form…that threshold was not indexed to inflation.
Which meant that as balances grew…
As property inside self-managed funds appreciated…
As compounding continued to do what compounding does…
The net would keep widening…quietly and automatically.
Without anyone having to vote for it again.
The people this rule targets today would NOT be the people it targets in 20 years.
Also…
For the first time in the history of Australia’s retirement savings system…the original proposal taxed unrealised gains.
The increased value of an asset you hadn’t sold.
Growth that existed on paper and nowhere else.
A tax bill on wealth you can’t even access yet.
The backlash from tax professionals…accountants…and advisers was significant.
The Tax Institute called it, and I’m quoting the actual submission here,
‘A deliberate action by the Government to ensure increasing tax revenues from this policy without any political backlash, now or in the future.’
So what happened?
The government retreated. They revised the bill.
Removed the unrealised gains provision.
Added indexation to both thresholds.
And then passed it anyway.
From 1 July 2026…an additional 15% tax applies to earnings on retirement fund balances above three million dollars, taking the effective rate to 30%. Above 10 million, it climbs to 40%.
Here’s what I want you to understand about that sequence of events.
They didn’t abandon the policy.
They absorbed the outrage. Stripped out the most obviously indefensible elements. Repackaged what remained as a reasonable compromise. And got it across the line.
That is how this process works.
Name it. Gauge the resistance, then retreat on the edges and advance on the substance.
Nothing is ever fully off the table once it has been raised.
These tell you the exact same story.
Except this time, the ink isn’t even dry yet.
Franking credits allow Australian shareholders to avoid being taxed twice on the same company dividend.
It’s been a cornerstone of retirement income planning for decades.
Back in 2019…the Labor Party proposed to scrap cash refunds for excess franking credits outright, as a way to win the election.
The backlash was so fierce it’s widely credited with costing them that election. They dropped it.
Now look at this year’s budget.
Buried inside the new tax on family trusts is a measure restricting how trusts can use franking credits…with consultation on the detail starting right now.
Same playbook.
Name it. Wait for the backlash. Pull it back. Bring it back later, attached to something else.
And it’s not just what they’re doing with your money.
It’s how closely they’re now watching it.
The ATO runs a program that…in its own words….uses:
‘Sophisticated data matching and analytic models to identify Australian residents who, together with their associates, control more than fifty million dollars in wealth.’
Not because there is evidence of wrongdoing.
Because there is evidence of accumulated wealth.
If you’ve built something substantial…you are now, by definition, on a LIST…
And here’s where it’s all heading.
Australia’s retirement funds now hold more than four trillion dollars.
And right now, the Treasury is consulting on changing the rules that decide how that money can be invested.
Specifically…so more of it flows into what they’re calling ‘national priorities’.
Housing. Energy. Infrastructure.
Worthy things, maybe.
But notice the direction.
The retirement savings system…
The one you’ve paid into your entire working life…the one you were told repeatedly and explicitly was yours…
…is being quietly repositioned in the language of Canberra from a private nest egg…
…into a pool of national capital.
Listen carefully the next time a minister talks about what our superannuation system should be doing for the country.
Not for you.
For the country.
That is a tell.
And our mandated retirement system is just the start…
For decades, if you borrowed money to buy an investment property you could offset the interest costs against your taxable income.
This is called negative gearing.
It was a completely legal, government-sanctioned strategy.
Financial planners recommended it.
Banks built products around it.
Millions of ordinary Australians made critical future financial decisions based on it…and used it to build a property portfolio…because that’s what you were supposed to do.
That’s how the game was set up.
Now…today…listen to how politicians and commentators talk about those same people.
Tax lurks.
Rorts.
Unfair advantages for the privileged.
A rigged system that locks young people out of home ownership.
The strategy didn’t change. The people didn’t change.
The language changed.
And that matters more than most people realise.
Because in politics…the language always changes before the law does.
This is what I mean by the NEW RULES.
You don’t legislate something out of existence until you’ve spent enough time making it sound like something that deserves to be legislated out of existence.
We are well into that process with property investment in this country. The same goes with income…
In the early 2000s…an Australian household income of $100,000 puts you squarely in the comfortable middle class.
Well above the median.
Enough to feel securely ‘sorted’ in most cities.
You could live like my parents did on that. With room to save, invest, or pay down a mortgage faster than most.
Today…
…that same six-figure number feels very different…
The average full-time worker in New South Wales now earns about $2,115 a week. Just over $110,000 a year, before tax.
Meaning…
‘Around $100,000’ has effectively become an average full-time salary in the state.
On paper, that still sounds good, right?
An individual…or even a couple…can get by on it. That changes if you throw kids into the mix.
‘Comfortably middle class’?
Especially in Sydney, with housing and living costs the way they are?
That’s a much tougher claim to make. And when you slice out tax, and adjust for the inflation we’ve had…
According to Australian CPI data…you’d now need roughly $190,000 to $205,000 a year to have the same purchasing power that $100,000 had back in 2000.
In other words…
If you’re still earning ‘about $100k’ today…
…you’re not living the lifestyle that $100k bought at the turn of the millennium.
You’re trying to do more…with something closer to HALF the spending power.
Please be clear about this…
This isn’t just your problem.
It’s your kids’ and grandkids’ problem too.
Because the screws are going to turn on THEM tomorrow even TIGHTER than they’re turning on you today.
None of this should be shocking.
It’s the entirely predictable result of a monetary system that’s been quietly inflating away the value of your money for decades.
The dollar in your pocket buys less every single year…
…and the home your parents bought on one income now takes two incomes…and the better part of a decade of saving…just to get into.
The system that’s meant to look after you in retirement gets adjusted every few years…by whoever’s in power at the time.
Always somehow in ways that end up serving someone else’s priorities first.
Never yours.
And every budget…there’s new language about fairness and relief and helping working Australians.
Not you.
Take the last round of tax cuts. Sold as exactly that kind of relief.
Have a look at this:
This is the chart from Australia’s own HILDA survey.
Full-time workers are now handing over a bigger share of their pay in tax than at any point in the last 20 years.
Not because YOU voted to raise the rate.
Just because wages went up and the brackets didn’t move with them.
Every budget…somehow…it gets worse.
And THIS year’s…was NO exception…
Let me give you a few more examples of the same pattern.
What you’re looking at here is a page out of this year’s federal budget. Not a leak. Not a prediction. The government’s own published plan for what happens to your money…in their own words.
If you’ve ever sold an investment, shares, property, anything, you’ve probably benefited from the Capital Gains Tax discount.
The idea was simple.
If you hold an investment for more than a year before selling it…you only pay tax on half the profit.
It was designed to reward patience.
To encourage long-term thinking over short-term speculation.
That’s been the rule since 1999.
In this year’s federal budget…
…the government announced it’s scrapping it.
From the 1st of July 2027, the 50% discount disappears.
In its place…
…a new minimum tax rate of 30% on whatever gain you’ve made…once they’ve adjusted your purchase price for inflation.
That’s not a discount anymore.
That’s a FLOOR.
A minimum amount of tax you’ll pay no matter how long you held the asset, or how patient you were.
So…
If you’ve spent years building a share portfolio or an investment property…doing it the right way…holding for the long haul…
You’ll hand over a bigger slice of your gains to Canberra when you eventually sell.
There’s now a floor under what they take.
Same risk, same patience.
Just a smaller reward for it.
Many Australian families set up trusts specifically to accumulate and distribute investment income across family members in a tax-effective way.
It’s been a legitimate and widely used structure for decades.
In the same budget, the government announced a new minimum tax of 30% on what trusts pay out, starting in 2028.
So…
If your trust distributes to a spouse who isn’t working…an adult child still studying…or a retired parent on a low income…anyone whose own tax rate sits under 30%…
…that gap is gone.
The trust pays the 30% regardless of who actually receives the money.
The Treasurer told Parliament this would help close a ‘tax loophole’.
That language again: LOOPHOLE.
Like YOU’RE at fault!
A structure millions of ordinary families built their financial plans around is now a loophole, apparently.
If you hold shares and occasionally manage your tax position around the end of the financial year…
…selling something at a loss before June 30 to offset a gain elsewhere…
…be aware that this too is now under the microscope.
The ATO’s compliance program specifically targets what it calls ‘wash sales’…
…where you sell a stock at a loss and buy it back shortly after.
It’s something ordinary investors have done for years.
Now it’s a priority area…with the ATO using data analytics across brokerage accounts, share registries, and trading apps to find it.
The point isn’t that any one of these changes will ruin you.
The point is the direction of travel.
Every change moves in the same direction.
Away from you. Toward THEM.
And these aren’t things they’re ‘looking at’ anymore. They’ve got dates on them now.
And the people writing these rules are not losing sleep over your financial future…
Meanwhile…SOMETHING ELSE is happening that gets even less attention…
Did you pick this up…?
The government and the Reserve Bank have both been formally exploring what they call a central bank digital currency.
A digital Australian dollar.
Issued and controlled by the government.
Every transaction recorded — every dollar traceable.
And in the most advanced versions of this technology…which China, by the way, has already deployed at scale…
…that digital currency can be programmed.
Restricted to certain purchases. Given an expiry date so it has to be spent by a particular time. Made inaccessible under certain conditions the government defines.
What could go wrong?
Look. I’m not saying Australia is about to do any of these things.
I’m saying the architecture for it is quietly being built.
And once the architecture exists…the question of what it gets USED FOR…becomes a political one.
Decided by whoever is in power at the time.
The good news is…
Physical cash…and crypto…and GOLD…and that is my area of expertise…CANNOT be tracked.
Cannot be programmed or switched off.
Which is precisely why physical cash’s gradual disappearance from daily life is NOT an accident.
Have you noticed that some places DON’T EVEN TAKE YOUR CASH anymore?
Cash has already fallen to just 13% of Australian transactions.
A decade ago, it was closer to half.
And here’s what tells you everything about where this is heading:
Around half of all Australian businesses have told the RBA they plan to discourage cash payments in the near future.
HALF!
The government knows this is a problem…which is why they’ve announced a mandate requiring businesses to accept cash for essential goods.
Groceries. Fuel. Medicine.
Think about that for a moment.
We now live in a country where the government has to LEGISLATE the right to pay with physical money.
That is not the behaviour of a system that plans to keep cash around…
Point is…
They’re being picked up.
Carried to the other end of the field.
And pointed in the opposite direction…
And if you’re standing where the goalposts used to be…you’re being told you’re standing in the wrong place.
Investors who responded to decades of policy incentives and built portfolios are not being thanked for their foresight.
You’re being repositioned as part of the problem.
And then there is something I suspect is sitting in the back of your mind right now…even if you haven’t quite articulated it in these terms…
Artificial intelligence.
Not as a technology story. As an economic one.
The disruption is already underway in white-collar work…
…the professions, the knowledge jobs, the careers that a generation of Australians invested heavily in through education and credential-building…
…is only in its earliest stages.
Now, I’m not predicting mass unemployment.
What I am observing is a structural shift in the value of certain kinds of labour and expertise.
And when the value of labour shifts that quickly…
…governments respond.
They respond with redistribution…
With new taxes on accumulated capital to fund social programs…for people whose economic position has changed through no fault of their own.
The wealth you’ve built becomes, once again, a resource.
I’m not predicting a raid. I’m not telling you they’re going to take your money.
What I am telling you is that the FRAMING has changed.
The institutional attitude and language have changed.
And when the language changes consistently…in the same direction…across multiple policy areas, over multiple years, in multiple countries simultaneously…
That is not a coincidence.
In my experience — 13 years of watching how financial and regulatory trends develop, not just in this country but globally — when the framing changes, the policy eventually follows.
And the people who will feel it most are not the ones who gamed the system.
You can’t control what Canberra decides to do next.
You can’t vote your way out of a trend that both major parties are, in different ways and at different speeds…already moving toward.
But you CAN make a decision.
The same kind of decision I made in 2013…
When I looked at where things were heading and decided to build my financial future on a foundation that no treasurer’s budget night announcement could reach.
Most people don’t make that decision.
They keep working harder, saving more, waiting for the next rate cut, the next budget, maybe a change of government, to finally shift things back in their favour.
I tried that too.
Until the day I stopped pushing away a question I’d been avoiding for years.
What if it doesn’t get better?
What if every change just takes me further from where I want to be?
So instead of waiting for a system to deliver something it was never actually designed to give me…I started asking a different question.
Not how do I make the most of what I’m in.
Here’s what I mean.
Think about what most of us actually own.
A bank balance is really a promise from a bank…backed by a promise from a government…backed by the ongoing confidence of millions of people who’ve agreed, for now, to keep believing.
A retirement pot exists on a screen, but sits behind a wall of political interference…wholly dependent on decisions made by people you’ve never met and never voted for.
Property…if you got in early enough…is real, but leveraged, illiquid, and taxed more heavily every year you hold it.
Notice what all three have in common.
Every single one of them depends on someone ELSE…keeping a promise.
So…I went looking for something that didn’t.
Now, I’ll pause there.
Because for some of you…that word might have changed how you’re reading this.
Maybe it’s a slight letdown. Gold? That old thing?
Or maybe it’s the opposite; you’re already nodding. But you might already have a bit of gold. Or even own a few gold and silver stocks.
Whatever your current take on gold is, stay with me.
Because what I started building in 2013 goes well beyond that.
This isn’t a story about stashing a few gold bars away as a safety measure.
And it’s not about riding a rising gold price by picking the right mining stocks. Though if you did that over the past year or two, good for you…you made real money.
Both of those are PART of the blueprint I’m about to share with you.
But they’re far from the whole strategy. If they were, I wouldn’t be wasting your time today.
Now gold and silver have done well these past few years.
But this isn’t about chasing a hot trade.
People are responding to gold and silver doing well. That’s the herd.
The buying up of the world’s precious metals.
That started long before the price of gold started moving…
I’m talking about central banks. Not retail investors chasing a chart.
The same institutions responsible for printing the money that’s been losing value…have been quietly stockpiling the one thing that CAN’T BE PRINTED.
For three years running…the world’s central banks bought more than a thousand tonnes of gold a year between them, levels not seen since the 1950s.
And even last year…when that pace eased slightly, they still bought nearly double their historical average.
And in this year’s Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey…
…89% of the people who manage that money said they expect those reserves to keep growing.
Gold has now overtaken US government bonds as the most-held reserve asset on Earth.
That is huge.
And yet…if you knew this fact, you’re in the minority.
Think about what that means.
The institutions with the best access to information…the best economists…and the most at stake if they get it wrong…have spent three years quietly becoming the biggest buyers of gold in history.
And it’s not just central banks anymore…
In the United States…state after state has spent the last two years passing laws recognising gold and silver as legal tender again, alongside the US dollar.
Utah started it back in 2011.
Tennessee and several others followed in 2025. And Florida, the largest state to do it yet, is on track to do so any day now.
Now, you might be thinking: Central banks? US gold legislation?
What’s that got to do with growing or protecting my wealth here in Australia?
Fair question.
Here’s the answer.
The people whose entire job is protecting national wealth have made their move.
Quietly…but unmistakably.
And the only question left is whether you make yours before or after everyone else catches on.
That’s not a fringe movement anymore.
We have lawmakers…in the largest economies on Earth…formally writing gold back into the definition of money.
While most people have had their attention pulled in every other direction…this has been happening in the background.
See…
This isn’t a story about gold doing well and jumping on a trend.
Gold doing well is the easiest part to see.
What I built around it…over 13 years and three full market cycles…is the part almost nobody talks about.
And that’s exactly what I want to show you now.
As I say…I call it the Go Your Own Way Blueprint.
But before we get there…I want to answer a question you’re probably already asking.
Why listen to me?
There’s no shortage of people happy to tell you what to do with your money.
We’ve all heard the stories of financial advisers giving you their own ‘blueprints’…which often consist of products they are paid to sell!
Most so-called professionals don’t run their own strategies…with their own money…through a series of cycles that actually tested them.
I have.
In 2013, I took $170,000 of my own money and used it to test this blueprint. To see if going my own way actually worked…or if it was just a nice idea.
Today, that’s grown to more than $1.5 million.
And that does not include the bullion I’ve stashed away, plus our family house…all funded from my Go Your Own Way Blueprint gains.
Let me put that in terms that actually mean something…because the dollar figure alone doesn’t tell you much.
That’s a compound return of roughly 18% a year…for 13 straight years.
For comparison…
If I’d simply left that same money in the share market, I’d have ended up with around $525,000.
Instead…by going my OWN way…I built something worth nearly three times that.
If you’re doubtful about getting a bit more proactive with your gold investing…just think about that: I tripled the regular stock market.
And I didn’t do it by getting lucky once and coasting.
I did it by running my own money through three complete gold market cycles…including stretches where the strategy looked like it was failing before it came good.
I’m not telling you this to brag.
I’m telling you…because 13 years and three cycles is long enough to know whether something actually works…or whether it just looks good in a PowerPoint presentation.
This isn’t a guru’s secret formula.
It’s a tested way of thinking about money that doesn’t depend on Canberra…
…and I now run almost all my own wealth through it today.
And before I show you what it actually looks like…
…I want to be clear about what I’m NOT asking you to do.
I’m not asking you to sell your shares.
Or completely reinvent your retirement fund direction from here.
Or walk away from strategies that have worked for you so far.
This isn’t a reset.
It’s a rethink.
Based on everything we’ve been talking about so far.
A way of positioning some of what you’ve already built…so that five years from now…you’re not just hoping the rules stay in your favour.
You’ve made sure they don’t have to.
This is the blueprint I want to show you now.
And it has three layers…
Layer 1 – this is where it begins.
It’s a basic layer in principle.
OWN SOME PHYSICAL GOLD AND SILVER.
But it’s one many get wrong…because they either skip it entirely…or mistake it for the whole strategy.
A physical holding is not a number on an app.
Not an entry in someone else’s ledger.
Not a promise from a bank, a fund manager, or a government.
Just the metal, in your possession, answerable to no one.
Governments can freeze a bank account.
They can change the rules on a managed fund overnight.
We’ve spent the last half hour walking through exactly how.
But they cannot reach into a vault and freeze gold that isn’t registered to any institution at all…
This is what I mean by setting up your own gold standard.
While the official one disappeared from the world’s financial system back in the 1970s…
…nothing’s stopping you from building a personal version of it.
For your own wealth, under your own control.
Over the past decade…for instance…I’ve steadily grown my gold bullion bar and coin position to preserve my purchasing power.
In that time, they have outperformed the broader Australian share market…delivering returns twice as high, even after dividends are included.
But I want to be upfront about something…because I think straight talk matters more than hype.
Despite that outperformance, this layer is not there to make you rich.
That’s not its job.
It alone won’t help you outperform the markets.
Its job is to make sure that whatever else happens…in the markets, in Canberra, in the broader economy…there is a portion of what you’ve built that simply cannot be touched.
Insurance, not growth.
And once that foundation is in place…the next question becomes obvious.
If your protection is sitting in a safe…how do you actually use it when an opportunity shows up?
That’s where Layer 2 comes in.
So…the second layer is the same protection…in a form you can actually use.
Precious metals ETFs.
Exchange-traded funds that track the price of gold and silver directly…that you can buy and sell on the ASX in seconds…the same way you’d trade any share.
You’re not giving up what Layer 1 gave you.
You still hold an asset that moves independently of bank balances…retirement funds…and government promises.
What you’re gaining is convertibility.
Think of it this way.
Layer 1 is the vault.
Layer 2 is the key you can actually use…without driving across town to get it.
I use both, for different reasons.
The physical metal isn’t going anywhere — it’s there for the long haul…regardless of what happens in any given month.
The ETF exposure is what lets me act.
Topping up a position…taking some profit, repositioning, getting out if it goes the wrong way — without ever touching the metal that’s meant to just sit there and do its job.
That solves the mobility problem.
And in a broader gold bull market — which is where we are right now — mobility is what separates investors who capture the move…from those who watch it happen.
Here’s what I mean…
Physical gold doesn’t care what the price does on any given day.
That’s its strength. But it’s also its limitation.
You can’t rebalance a bar. You can’t take partial profits from a coin.
And you certainly can’t add to a position at 11am on a Tuesday when the signal is right.
ETFs can do all of that.
In a rising market, the ability to top up at the right moment — or trim before a correction hits — is worth more than most investors realise until they’ve been through a full cycle without it.
As I’ve said, I’ve been through three.
Layer 2 is what gives the whole blueprint its flexibility.
The physical metal in Layer 1 anchors everything.
The ETF exposure in Layer 2 is what lets me move capital around the position, without ever disturbing the foundation underneath it.
But protection and mobility…on their own…still only preserve what you’ve got.
They don’t grow it.
For that, you need the third layer.
And it’s the one that’s done almost all the heavy lifting in my own results…
This is where the actual growth can happen.
And since I started managing my own portfolio with this third layer operating…I’ve outperformed the broader Australian share market by close to three times over.
But this is another layer almost everyone gets wrong.
Because it looks the simplest.
Just buy a gold mining stock, right?
It’s actually the hardest.
Here’s the idea.
When the gold price moves…a well-run mining company doesn’t just move with it.
It can move by multiples of it.
Think about why.
The company isn’t just holding gold…it’s pulling it out of the ground at a fixed cost.
So…when the price rises, almost all of that extra revenue drops straight to the bottom line.
A 20% rise in the gold price can turn into 60%, 80%…
…sometimes by triple or quadruple digit percentage gains with the right mining stock…
…because you’re not buying the metal.
You’re buying the operating leverage of a business riding the trend underneath it.
That’s the upside.
It’s also why this is the layer where people get hurt if they get it wrong.
Not every mining company is a good business.
Some are.
Many aren’t.
EVEN IN A BULL MARKET LIKE WE’VE JUST SEEN.
The difference between a stock that returns 500%…
And one that goes to zero…often isn’t the gold price at all…
It’s the quality of the deposit…the people running the company…and where it sits in its own life cycle.
The ASX lists major producers like Northern Star, mid-tier operators like Ramelius, developers like Cavalier and explorers like Ballard Mining.
They’re all called ‘gold stocks’ — but they’re wildly different beasts depending on where we are in the cycle.
In a nutshell...
Early in the cycle, you want producers with stable operations and cash flow…
Mid-cycle, you rotate toward developers as they de-risk and ramp up…
And in late cycle…provided all goes to plan…you take profits from everything and move back to physical and ETFs.
This is the part of the Go Your Own Way Blueprint that took me 13 years and three full market cycles to actually get good at…
Turning a four-figure position into a result that mattered.
Holding through an 88% drawdown on one stock because I’d done the work and believed in what I owned…
…and watching that single position alone return more than $100,000 on a $35,000 outlay once the cycle turned.
That kind of result doesn’t come from owning gold.
It comes from owning the right gold business.
At the right point in the cycle.
And having the conviction to hold it when everyone else is selling.
And it’s also the layer where most people…left on their own…either get the timing wrong.
Or pick the wrong company.
Or both.
Now I’m pretty sure you already know Layer 3 is the riskiest element to this blueprint. You can lose some or all of your investment.
Gold stocks aren’t gold, but businesses that explore for and produce gold.
Therefore, they carry company risk…operational risk…and management risk on top of the gold price itself.
And some of them will lose you money even while gold is rising.
This isn’t a ‘set and forget’ corner of the market.
It demands smart selection and real discipline.
All that said…
I currently have a running portfolio of 16 Australian gold stocks.
They’re sitting on an average gain of 45% as we record this — which is solid. But that’s not even why I hold them.
I selected every one of these 16 for what I believe they’ll do over the NEXT two years of this cycle. Not the last two.
More on that portfolio shortly.
But before we get there…I want to tell you something else.
Something I’ve never put in front of an audience before.
It actually stretches beyond gold.
And taps into an aspect that’s going to sit at the core of global affairs over the next 20 years…but which most Australians have never thought about.
The more I develop this fourth layer…the more I believe in its potential to jack our blueprint outperformance of the general market even higher.
It’s easy to implement. But perhaps even a slight jump up in risk to the gold stock layer. (And as I mentioned, gold stocks themselves carry risk.)
Totally up to you whether you follow my path here.
But I genuinely believe whoever isn’t exposed to Layer 4 in the next few years…isn’t just missing an opportunity.
They’re staying dependent on a system they don’t control.
Which is the entire reason we started this conversation.
Like I say…if I’m right about it…it could end up being the most powerful layer of all four.
I’ll show you exactly what it is shortly.
If even half of what you’ve just seen resonates…you probably already knew some of this.
Maybe not the detail. Maybe not the numbers.
But the feeling that something’s shifting under your money…under your retirement saving strategies…under the whole system you’ve been told to trust.
I’m guessing none of that was new to you today.
What I’m hoping is that I’ve opened your eyes wide enough so that you can see just how bad it really is…
So let me be straight-up:
This is a presentation with a solution to this problem.
And something you can actually do about it.
For the past several years…I’ve published everything I know about this:
Management of the initial three layers…
The specific companies…the timing…and what I’m doing with my own family money and why…in a private, members-based advisory letter called:
And if you like what you’ve seen so far today…and you believe I can be of value to you going forward…
I’d love to extend an invitation to you to join me, my family and our close-knit membership of like-minded Australians.
Now, I’m not a financial planner.
But I know many charge hundreds of dollars…even as much as a thousand…for a single afternoon consultation.
And what you often walk away with is advice built around their approved product list…and their version of what responsible investing looks like.
In other words — it’s still THEIR WAY.
The Australian Gold Report is something else entirely.
Specialist analysis, live stock recommendations, and a strategy most of the financial establishment will never point you toward.
Now, what do you expect to pay for access to knowledge of that kind?
Well, I can tell you the official membership price, for a whole year, is $499.
That’s what it normally costs.
But since you’re here today, I don’t want you to pay that.
I told you at the start this is personal to me.
And…did you see the last budget?
Watching what’s been done to retirement savings…to property…to the purchasing power of every dollar you’ve worked for — it’s convinced me, and our group of members, we’re at a tipping point.
Not in 10 years. Right now.
Most Australians can sense something’s wrong.
They just haven’t connected the dots yet. And the trap is closer to closing than most people realise.
Now I can’t fix the budget.
But I CAN make it as easy as possible for as many Australians to choose a different path before it does.
That’s why…if you hit the button below…you’ll discover the single biggest membership offer I’ve ever shared.
In short: you won’t pay anywhere close to the official $499 membership price, by clicking through today.
Before you decide though, I need to explain two things…
First, everything Australian Gold Report membership gives you.
You wouldn’t join a club without knowing what’s actually included — and I wouldn’t ask you to.
And then there’s the new FOURTH layer of the blueprint.
I’ve told you it goes beyond gold…and that it could be the most significant piece of the whole strategy. But I haven’t shown you what it actually is.
Let me do that now — then you’ll have everything you need to make your decision.
We’ll begin with the core of it.
What you actually get the moment you become a member of The Australian Gold Report.
The beating heart of my Go Your Own Way Blueprint is the advisory itself.
It’s ongoing guidance across the three EXISTING layers of this blueprint — protection, mobility and growth — for as long as you’re a member.
At the centre of that is a living, breathing portfolio of stock recommendations.
Real positions, including the 16 open positions I’ve already mentioned, that I personally manage in real time.
New additions when I find them. Plus, a comprehensive analysis laying out the company’s investment case and how to position your holdings.
Sell and take-profit signals when it’s time to bank gains rather than get greedy. Or exit losing positions with minimal damage.
Quarterly reviews of the precious metals industry and our companies.
Point is, you’re not getting a static list.
You’re getting MY decisions…as I make them…for as long as you’re a member.
And from here…that portfolio also expands to include the fourth layer — the one I’m about to show you.
There’s something else, too. Something I take just as seriously as the stock calls.
I keep watch on what I call the mission creep — the slow…ongoing expansion of how much access governments and institutions claim over your money.
Changing retirement fund rules, as I detect them.
Tax thresholds. What counts as ‘yours’ versus what’s now considered fair game.
Most Australians have their eyes closed to this. Every week, mine are open.
And so are my members’.
On top of that…you get a direct line to me, via a members-only email address.
If you’ve got a question about anything inside the blueprint — about how the strategy works — you can email me through that address.
Every quarter I will host a Q&A video to answer your questions.
I’ll always be upfront that I can’t give personal financial advice.
What I WILL give you is everything I know…in general terms…so you can make your own informed decision.
That’s the core membership.
Ongoing guidance. Live stock recommendations. Vigilance on what’s being done to your wealth while most people aren’t looking. Direct access to me.
But here’s the thing.
Given where we are right now — at this exact moment, with what I’ve shown you about how fast things are moving — the core membership alone isn’t enough.
So…if you join today, I’ve recently put together some vital new resources you can access within minutes.
The first is something I don’t even like calling a ‘book’.
It’s closer to the complete written record of everything I’ve learned across three full gold price cycles — over a decade of research…distilled in one place.
And here’s what I want you to understand:
Even if you stripped away the advisory…stripped away everything else I’m about to show you…this resource
alone is worth several times the official entry fee.
Let me show you exactly why.
On Layer 1 — protecting what you have…
Gold’s True Message will show you:
On Layer 2 — staying mobile…
On Layer 3 — the growth engine…
This is the base blueprint knowledge.
The stuff most Australians investing in this space — if they’re investing in it at all — simply don’t have.
It’s the difference between sleepwalking into a gold trade because a friend mentioned it…and understanding exactly what you own…why you own it…and what stage of the cycle you’re in.
But here’s the thing.
I wrote Gold’s True Message over years, starting in August 2023.
And what I put on those pages is timeless — the principles…the frameworks…the lessons from three full cycles. These don’t go out of date.
But the world around it will, of course, change.
Since I finished writing…we’ve had an entire federal budget come and go — and what’s in it changes the picture for every Australian investor…gold or otherwise.
So…in the last few weeks I set some time aside to put my thoughts into a follow-up.
A kind of state-of-the-nation briefing for where things actually stand right now…heading into 2027 and beyond.
I’m calling it…
I remind you of the essentials — the history of gold and why it protects your purchasing power…the different precious metal assets available to you…and the real difference between holding physical bullion and holding a gold ETF.
Then I hand you my THREE CORE PLAYS going forward.
Not speculative punts — but established companies, ready to put to work the moment you finish reading.
This is brand new.
Which means if you join today, you’re not just catching up on gold.
You’re standing on the most current ground anyone in this country has on the subject — right now, today, ahead of almost every other Australian still working off information that’s already out of date.
Now, I mentioned earlier that you won’t pay the $499 12-month membership due today.
So, what will you pay if you click below?
An 80% discount for new members, with the full scope of support, and resources, I’ve just described.
You already may have decided you want to come in alongside me.
If you have, there’s ONE MORE layer that’s about to enter the mix.
And I want to explain it to you now…
Remember earlier when I told you the blueprint goes beyond gold?
Here’s what I meant.
Right now…three of the biggest economic forces on the planet are all pulling in the same direction — and they all need the same thing to function.
The AI buildout.
Every data centre…every chip…every piece of infrastructure powering this boom depends on specific metals to exist.
Not gold. Metals most people couldn’t name.
Same with the global energy transition.
Electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines, solar — all of it runs on the same narrow list of materials.
And quietly accelerating behind both of those — militarisation.
Defence spending is rising across the developed world, and modern weapons systems run on these same strategic metals.
Three forces. One finite pool of resources.
And right now…a single country controls most of the global supply.
That’s not speculation. That’s the geopolitical reality sitting underneath every one of these trends.
Which means anyone not positioned for this isn’t just missing an opportunity. They’re staying dependent on a supply chain controlled by a government whose interests don’t align with theirs.
Sound familiar?
It’s the same problem we started with.
Going your own way doesn’t stop at gold.
Several of the gold deposits already inside my 16-position portfolio aren’t pure gold plays.
They’re polymetallic — in other words, gold sitting alongside other strategic metals in the same ground.
The gold got them noticed.
The rest is sitting there almost unpriced by the broader market.
That’s the first part of Layer 4 — stocks you may already be looking at through a gold lens that deserve a completely different second look.
The second part is new territory, even for me.
A small number of selections where the strategic metal is the main game, not a bonus sitting alongside it.
A measured, limited allocation — the same disciplined approach I took with speculative explorers back in 2022…before the rotation hit in 2024.
I believe this is THE megatrend of the next decade.
And I’d rather show you where I’m positioning while almost nobody else is looking…than wait until it’s obvious and the easy money is already gone.
I hope — whatever you decide today — you’re coming away with a few insights. A clearer picture of what’s actually happening to the financial landscape most Australians are trying to build a life inside.
And why the conventional playbook is producing diminishing returns for people who’ve done nothing wrong.
But if what you’ve heard today has connected — if the blueprint makes sense to you…and you want to start building a position outside the reach of Canberra — then I’d like you to join me.
The regular membership fee is $499 a year.
Today, through this invitation, it’s $99.
80% off.
For the next 12 months of research, analysis…and the entire blueprint package you see here.
You’ll get every move I make inside the live Go Your Own Way portfolio.
Every position. Every entry point. Every time I add, trim, or exit.
The gold layers of this portfolio — physical, ETFs, the mining stocks — that’s proven ground. Thirteen years of cycles. Real money. A track record you’ve seen laid out in detail today.
Then we’ll add Layer 4 to that in the coming months…
I can’t PROMISE you outperformance.
Nobody can.
What I CAN promise is that you’ll never be left wondering what I’m doing or why. Every decision. Every position. Explained in plain language…as I make it.
And if this past hour has taught you anything — I hope it’s this.
The most important financial decision you’ll ever make isn’t which stock to buy or which ETF to hold.
It’s deciding whose rules you’re going to live by.
The system has its version of that answer. It always will.
This is mine.
If that’s what you’re looking for — the JOIN NOW button is below.
I hope to see you alongside me and my community on the inside.
Thank you and God Bless.
All content is © 2005 – Fat Tail Investment Research Pty Ltd All Rights Reserved
Fat Tail Investment Research Pty Ltd holds an Australian Financial Services Licence: 323 988 ACN: 117 765 009 ABN: 33 117 765 009
All advice is general advice and has not taken into account your personal circumstances. Please seek independent financial advice regarding your own situation or if in doubt about the suitability of an investment.
Calculating Your Future Returns: The value of any investment and the income derived from it can go down as well as up. Never invest more than you can afford to lose, and keep in mind the ultimate risk is that you can lose whatever you've invested. While useful for detecting patterns, the past is not a guide to future performance. Some figures contained in this report are forecasts and may not be a reliable indicator of future results. Any potential gains in this letter do not include taxes, brokerage commissions, or associated fees. Investments in foreign companies involve risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Specifically, changes in the rates of exchange between currencies may cause a divergence between your nominal gain and your currency-converted gain, making it possible to lose money once your total return is adjusted for currency.
All figures accurate as at . Please download and read our Financial Services Guide
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