Mid-Year Newsletter and Life Update
A month in Colombia, we discovered a new porphyry copper system in Argentina, a volcano in Ecuador, the residency door getting tougher in Paraguay, and the full July portfolio update.
I spent the entire month of July in Colombia, climbed a volcano in Ecuador, came home to Asunción to find a loyal reader completely sold on Paraguay, and watched the company I work for announce a brand new copper gold discovery in Argentina.
Australia, meanwhile, spent July arguing about how to divide up a shrinking pie.
The short version, for anyone who missed it. Personal income tax is now 42.6% of all Australian tax revenue against an OECD average of 23.7%. Gross debt has crossed a trillion dollars.
From July 2027 the CGT discount is gone. The same $100,000 of location independent income costs you $22,520 a year in Australia and zero as a Paraguayan tax resident with foreign sourced income, provided you have properly ceased Australian tax residency and structured it correctly. Get advice on your own situation.
And if you want the single picture that explains why the mood has shifted, it is this one.
Real GDP per person, indexed to 100 at the start of every government since Fraser. Every government on that chart, whatever its politics and whatever its mistakes, handed the average Australian a bigger economy than it inherited. Every single one, until now. The red line at the bottom right finishes below where it started. Australians are going backwards per head, and the answer in the May budget was to tax the people still trying to go forwards.
Anyone who does not minimise their tax needs their head read. Anyone who stays somewhere going backwards, out of habit, needs it read twice.
It’s a big world out there and as I keep saying, you can always go back if it doesn’t work out. You’ll just have to swallow some pride. And if you’re worried about what people might think if you have to go crawling back, the truth is most people don’t care about you that much. They’re too busy with their own problems.
A month in Colombia
A full month on the ground in Colombia.
I do like MedellÃn. The city sits in a long green valley with what might be the most comfortable climate on earth. Spring, every single day, all year. Flowers everywhere, dramatic hills, cable cars climbing the slopes, a city that genuinely looks after its public spaces. It is beautiful, it is green, and I understand completely why half the digital nomads on the planet have moved there.
But comfort is not the same as fit. Somewhere in week three, sitting in that perfect weather, I realised I was homesick for the Southern Cone. For Paraguay and Argentina. For the heat, the steak culture, the space, the feeling of building something rather than passing through. MedellÃn is a city you admire. Asunción is a city where my life actually works. I like MedellÃn, but I do not like it half as much as home, and it took a month of perfect spring weather to teach me that. The perception gap on security cuts the other way too. The Colombia in Australian imaginations is thirty years out of date. Daily life in MedellÃn is ordinary in the best way: gyms, cafes, people getting on with it. I will not pretend the whole country is like that, because it is not, and the regions are their own story. But the gap between what people think Colombia is and what you actually live is one of the widest I have seen anywhere, and that gap is exactly where opportunity lives.
The other thing you feel on the ground is the political shift. De la Espriella does not even take office until 7 August, and nobody serious expects Colombia to become easy overnight. Security, permitting, illegal mining, community politics. All still there. But the conversations have already changed. People in and around the industry are talking about what gets built, not what gets shut down. That is a different country to the one capital was pricing twelve months ago.
The problem with Colombia was never the geology. It was the overhang. The overhang is gone.
Five days in Quito, Ecuador on the way home
Before flying back to Paraguay I stopped in Quito for five days, and it deserves its own section.
First, a practical note for anyone building a life on this continent. Get status on LATAM. I fly them everywhere down here, and with gold status the whole experience changes: no lines, better seats, priority everything. South America runs on LATAM, and if you concentrate your flying on one airline the status pays for itself in saved hours within a year.
The highlight of Quito was Cotopaxi Volcano. We drove up and hiked to the refugio at 4,800 metres, which is more than double the height of anything you can stand on in Australia.
The rest of the week was crab, which Ecuadorians treat as a national institution and rightly so, and seeing the city properly. A well connected friend, connected all the way to the top of the country, showed me the parts of Quito you would never find on your own.
Felt like I was in an Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown episode (my favourite television series ever).
Ecuador is dollarised, and it was as cheap or cheaper than my home base in Asunción, Paraguay.
A reader’s view on Asunción
I love getting messages like this from loyal readers.
He landed in Asunción while I was away, spent the week doing exactly what you should do here, which is eat well and look around properly, and then sent me this:
Will be back in October. For good.
I have been screaming about this country for two years, and there is always a voice in the back of your head asking whether you have just talked yourself into your own book. Then a bloke turns up with zero skin in the game, has one lunch at Patria Parrilla, and reaches the same conclusion I did.
The steak, the cost base, the calm, the fact that you’re left alone by the government here. The things I stopped noticing because they became normal.
It’s a little slice of paradise here in Paraguay, not completely without its downsides.
The Paraguayan residency door keeps closing
The trajectory is one way. Requirements tighter, process slower, price roughly double what it was two years ago, more people in the queue every month. Every Australian who reads about the 2027 CGT changes and finally moves makes it slightly worse for the person behind them.
The squeeze is now written down. From 6 July, Resolution 407 changed how you prove economic solvency for permanent residency. A university diploma on its own no longer cuts it.
You now need documents showing a real, paid activity, matched to your category. And the queue is growing fast: over 33,000 applications in the first half of 2026, up 62% on last year. The window is not closed. It just gets more demanding every quarter, exactly as I keep telling you.
I said it in June and it aged well in thirty days. The quicker you get permanent residency sorted, the better. If the free article convinced you, this is the step it converts into. Send me a message if you want help getting started. The agency I use for all of my internationalisation is the Way of Jerz.
This is the WhatsApp number for Ruth, the client manager: +507 6333-3682
Tell her you are a Geólogo Trader subscriber, and she will get you started on residency and any internationalisation (Paraguay, Panama, US LLC’s etc).
Paraguayan Geoarbitrage tip:
Another big tip I’ve figured out for life in Paraguay is a card and online bank called Meru. For personal everyday spending you can’t really use your business account linked to Wise or your LLC, as they will likely shut it down for personal use, so Meru is key here. You can transfer USD to Meru using the cheaper ACH transfer system and it literally costs nothing, around 0.16%. Just make sure you keep it under $2,000 USD per transfer. I’ve seen Meru give me a better rate than the current mid market exchange rate on some USD to guaranà purchases. I highly recommend you use it. Sign up with the link below:
Referral code (I don’t know what happens if you use it): ORRQWD
Below the line for paid subscribers: the Piuquenes North discovery and what a month around Cobrasco taught me, the full portfolio with weights from my live broker accounts, the ECT exit, and where Helius, Altair, and Metal Energy sit after a big month of news for all three.
Andina: another discovery in one country, a system growing in another
Disclosure first, because it matters. I am VP of Technical Communications at Andina Copper. I hold stock and options. It is my largest position by a wide margin. Nothing here is independent research or advice, and I will only discuss what has been publicly disclosed.