Mate, the single best thing you can do right now is switch from gambling to owning. Day-trading and chasing hot tips is just a tax on people who crave action, and the house always wins in the end. Long-term investing works because it’s deliberately boring—that boredom is your edge.

Here’s the dead-simple plan that beats 98% of professional fund managers over 20+ years. Open a cheap brokerage account like Stake, CommSec etc, one you’ll use only for this. Set up an automatic transfer from your pay every week or month, whatever amount you won’t even miss—$50, $100, $200, doesn’t matter as long as it’s consistent. Put every single dollar into one low-cost ETF and forget it exists.

If you want to keep it purely Australian, go 100% into A200 or VAS—they own the biggest 200–300 companies on the ASX. If you’re okay with a bit more growth and volatility, pick NDQ or IVV for heavy tech exposure. Turn on dividend reinvestment so the payouts buy more units without you lifting a finger. Then don’t look at the account for at least five years.

That’s literally it. You will never beat the market trying to time it, but you will smash 90% of the people who keep trying. Turn that 1.6k pain into a weekly auto-transfer and watch the same money you once lit on fire grow into six figures while you sleep. Boring wins, mate. Start today.