The portfolio had its best month of the year.
The book delivered its strongest monthly performance of the year, with every drill I care about turning, except at Andina Copper’s Piuquenes project, where it is currently snow season.
Meanwhile, I spent alot of time this month in the Aduana office at Asunción airport, trying to explain to Paraguayan customs why a box I had ordered from Texas should not be taxed through the roof.
Looking back at Australia, briefly
I will admit something. Every few weeks I look back at Australian news for confirmation bias. Pure and simple. I left, the exit cost me real unfront money (exit tax), and it is human to check the scoreboard.
August made it easy. Five Sydney Swans players were suspended for the rest of the season while a police investigation runs its course. Serious allegations, and they belong with the police and the courts, not with me. What struck me was not the story. It was the volume. Wall to wall, every bulletin, every back page, day after day.
Days later a woman was repeatedly stabbed and a young boy assaulted in an attack in central Melbourne by an African. A man was arrested. It held a fraction of one news cycle, and the country moved on.
I am not relitigating either story. I am pointing at the allocation. A country reveals its priorities by what it chooses to stare at and when serious issues like the latter get missed…
No charges for the Sydney Swans players yet…
The truck, the turbo, and the Paraguayan customs machine
In June I bought the truck. In August I got my full education in what it costs to keep an American truck alive in South America.
Quick recap for new readers: a RAM 2500 Laramie with the 6.7L Cummins diesel, bought out in the farm belt near the Paraguayan-Brazilian border in June. I insured locally with full Mercosur cover and roadside assistance. In Australia this truck is a six figure vehicle. Here it cost a fraction of that, and now I know why the market prices in a discount.
The turbo issues. My mechanic first thought it was just the electronic actuator, so I ordered one. Then the truth arrived: the whole VGT turbocharger was done. I ordered a remanufactured unit with actuator from the States, and between the part and the freight the bill was well into four figures before it even touched the border.
Then Paraguay reminded me that geoarbitrage is not free money. Aduana wanted roughly a third in import tax, and they calculate it on the customs value including the freight. Read that again. You pay tax on the shipping. Weeks of courier paperwork and fees and airport customs visits later, I ended up physically carrying the turbo box to the workshop myself.
Lessons for anyone importing large items into Paraguay:
Budget a third on top of anything you ship in. The duty is real and freight is in the calculation. For small parts, a friend flying in with a suitcase beats a courier every time.
None of this changes the maths. Even with the turbo and the customs tax, the truck all in is still less than half its Australian cost. The system here is imperfect and slow, but it lets you own things. I love the beast, turbo drama and all.
The plan has not changed either. Once the new turbo is in and the truck is properly sorted I’m looking forward to some big road trips.
Paraguay, spring, and the residency file
Spring is arriving in Asunción, the lapachos will be out again soon (the pink flower trees that dominate the city), and the permanent residency file is still grinding forward. The full breakdown piece I promised, exact costs, documents and processing times, comes once my paperwork is lodged. The queue keeps growing behind me, which is exactly why I keep telling you not to wait.
Something else firmed up for me this year, and it is worth saying plainly, because it sits underneath every other choice in this newsletter. Incompetent tax systems are about to become competent, because AI will do the work for them. Every transfer, every card swipe, every login leaves a digital footprint, and the tools for joining those dots are getting cheaper by the month. Enforcement used to be a resourcing problem. Soon even the slowest, most understaffed revenue office on earth will run sharp analytics off a software subscription. Whatever country you answer to, assume its rules will actually be applied.
That is exactly why I picked Paraguay, and why this year has hardened the decision rather than softened it. I wanted a system simple enough to follow to the letter. Territorial tax, real residency, a cédula, a RUC, local banking, my name on everything, and professional advice where it matters. Set your life up assuming the tax office is competent, because very soon all of them will be. In the AI era that is the only version of this lifestyle that lasts.
Any questions on Paraguay, message Ruth at Jerz on WhatsApp: +507 6333-3682. Tell her you are a Geólogo Trader subscriber and she will point you in the right direction.
Reader perk: Nomad Geologist
Quick one before we get to the stocks. I discuss a lot of companies with my mate, Nomad Geologist. He has just launched a new website where he builds his own 3D models of drilling results using public data from the stocks I follow.
In my view, this is highly valuable for retail investors. It helps you visualise the scale and potential that some junior miners claim in their news releases better than almost anything else.
He has set up two codes for Geologo Trader readers. GEOLOGOTRADER makes your first month of the Investor Pass free on top of the 7 day trial, so you get over five weeks to decide whether it earns a place. GEOLOGOTRADERYEARLY takes a month off the yearly pass.
Start the free trial at nomad-geologist.com
Disclosure: subscriptions through these codes pay me a share. I was a paying reader long before that was true.
Andina: two more holes, same answer
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.
Cobrasco spent August doing what it has done all year: answering the drill bit.
On 11 August we reported 264m at 0.63% Cu from 36m, within 504m at 0.48% Cu, further expanding the mineralised footprint. On 25 August, CDH011: 400m at 0.46% Cu, 60ppm Mo and 1.1g/t Ag from 32m, including 206m at 0.67% Cu from 32m, including 40m at 0.87% Cu right at the top of the hole, with a lower zone of 290m at 0.25% Cu and 93ppm Mo beneath it.
The footprint now sits at roughly 1,200m by 550 to 700m and remains open in multiple directions. Multiple holes have already been completed from a new platform 350m northwest with results pending, and a second rig mobilisation is planned to speed the whole thing up.
Eleven holes reported now, and every one of them has returned significant mineralisation. I will let the numbers speak and keep my own commentary short. The stock finished August at C$1.20, up 15.4% for the month.
The wider world is catching on too. Colombia has just scrapped ten mining restrictions to bring investors back, and Frank Giustra put it plainly on X this week:
Note just how much attention Frank’s post above and the MINING.COM article have received on X.
My bet is that siginificant mining money will now flow into Colombia. Our neighbour, Rio Tinto (the world’s second biggest miner), has recently recommenced exploration at its Comita project, roughly 1.5 kilometres from us at Cobrasco.
Long-term readers will know this thesis isn’t new here. I wrote up Cobrasco early, back when Andina was still Pampa Metals, and visited the site with Joseph when the project was on nobody’s radar. While this is certainly no victory lap, it’s still very early days, and our project in Colombia has, to date, been wildly successful.
Below the line for paid subscribers: the best portfolio month of the year, the full book from my live broker accounts with every position updated, and the banking stack that actually works from Paraguay.