After 35 years of stockbroking for some of the biggest houses and investors in Australia and the UK, the Secret Broker is regaling Stockhead readers with his colourful war stories — from the trading floor to the dealer’s desk.

Look out. I’m getting on the soap box!

Only in Australia, the home of the young and free, can they make something so simple turn into something that needs a judge to challenge the government.

To the ordinary person, when arriving into Australia, you need to fill in a declaration card, so customs officers can guide you through to the other side and into freedom.

Someone quipped on Twitter that Dkovich is the only person to have lost an Australian title by only missing two shots.

Surely the rules are simple. Black and white.

But hold on, a civil servant has got involved and written them up so that simple becomes complicated. Not in their world but in our world.

Great TV shows like Yes Minister and the ABC’s Utopia are cringingly true examples of what really goes on behind closed doors ahead of their Minister’s press conference.

With an election coming up in Australia this year, the BS will only get worse as the politicians go out to fight for another four years in office.

Who can forget John Hewson losing an election as he fumbled over explaining how GST would apply to a cake.

Glazed cherries or not glazed cherries? That was the question.

The tax rules in Australia are so complicated that an ordinary person cannot fill in a tax return simply and easily, without making a mistake.

I remember watching David Koch explain on TV that if you stacked up all the pages of the legislation that made up the Australian tax rules, it would stand at over 1.5 metres tall.

That is red tape at its finest.

If any of you have tried to apply for a government grant, you will know when I say that only companies with a dedicated ‘grant office’ will ever get them granted.

If any of you have tried to list a company on the ASX and used an internal team and no outsiders, after two years you would still be struggling through the jungle of tape and bureaucracy and getting nowhere.

There was a lovely quote from a chap at the ASX, saying that in this month, there will be 18 IPOs and that they have been ‘very busy’.

Not one of the 18 can be guaranteed a happy start and I would say about 30% of them will not be around in five years time.

It doesn’t matter how much information is in the prospectus because history is full of failed listed companies, who all started with a 120-page prospectus.

They should just say, if you are prepared to lose 100% of your money, go for it, and have about 10 pages from a qualified analyst, giving it a rating of 1 out of 10 and their reasons why.

BoJo blows it

Over in the UK, Boris seems to have trumped everyone (including even Trump himself) by explaining away a Xmas party held in the grounds of 10 Downing Street.

He reckons that, at the time everyone in the UK was banned from having gatherings of no more than two people and he hosted a party of 40 staff, it was merely an ‘extension of an essential office meeting’.

Hell, they were even allowed to bring their own grog and get pissed up whilst drawing up rules and regulations for the Great Unwashed.

Now I’m wondering what visa stuff-ups could happen if Wimbledon was on and Dkovich’s private jet was just about to touch down.

OK, I’m finished now.

Mrs. B has put the soap box away and me to bed for a nap, so I can rest my little grey cells and not burn them out.

Maybe when I wake up, we will all know Dkovich’s fate.

Or maybe not!

The Secret Broker can be found on Twitter here @SecretBrokerAU or on email at [email protected].

Feel free to contact him with your best stock tips and ideas.