Tuesday, 31 March 2009

Buy High, Sell Low - Stock market trading for prats

Some of you who have perservered though this blog may remember me talking about the stock market and me toying with the idea of CFDs. Contracts For Difference. These are like bets on whether a share, commodity or a whole market will go up or down.

Well, I tried these and it was just as awful as my stock picking experiments. My first gamble, I mean, informed speculation was to try 'Shorting' London Stock Exchange shares. This company had just been chucked out of the Footsie 100, had been collapsing in price for months and all analysis indicated that they were stuffed. I 'sold' these shares on the assumption that they would tank further, on a gearing of 10 to 1. I.e £500 invested would bring either 10 times that much profit. Or that much loss... Natch, within a day of me taking this position the price of this previously defunct company had spiked up by 50%. Yowsa. I was looking at £2500 instant loss... Except that I was so incompetant buying the CFDs that I had only exposed myself to a tenth of what I meant to. Phew. Only a £250 loss. Inspired by this I then bought long on the Footsie. American and Asian markets had gone up wildly the day before, everything looked good; what could go wrong?

The Footsie then went down 100 points straight after me making my purchase. Another £500 loss. Cautiously, now I try and call what the market will do, WITHOUT actually investing any money. I have been wrong EVERY single time. I am now wondering if my ultimate money making idea would be to try and simply do the opposite of whatever I think is a good idea. That is what they call contrarian investing I believe. I'll let you know how that works out....

Thursday, 26 March 2009

48 and shagged out.

I'm 48 years old, 49 this year and I feel fucked. As I write, my right ear is bunged up with snot from this cold which I've had for 2 weeks. The inside of my arsehole is pinned back with rubber bands; fired helpfully there by a doctor to try and cure my latest bout of piles. This in turn has given me killer wind and what seems to be like an IBS stomache - I feel like shitting all the time, and am... My hair is now really thinning out big time. I've cut it right back to try and be honest but the overall effect is still "CHEMO BOY: YOU FOOLED NO-ONE!" I've got varicose veins which this doctor demonstrated horribly by tapping my shin while I held the 'valve' by my groin. I could feel the valve wobble which is a giveway that it 'leaks'. Agh. I've not been able to walk properly since. The thought of blood oozing and pooling inside my limbs as my arterial system falls apart is demoralizing and crap. The operation would involve stripping my veins out like so much rotten spaghetti and I wouldn't be able to do much for 2 weeks. I'm trying to put this off. I thought you bloody well could cure them with lasers! But as the doc put it, it is not as though they're simply going to shine a light on you from the other side of the room. They cut holes in your leg, then shove the freaking laser inside you. Agh, again.

My sex drive has wilted and sex now just seems like this ridiculous thing that teenagers and the working class do. I'm not even trying to do it and the missus just thinks it's me being nasty to her. If truth be told, 13 years of being told that I'm sexually selfish, greedy, inconsiderate and frankly not that bothered about whether anyone else apart from me gets off hasn't helped. She denies it, but effectively Q has been saying I'm shit in bed for years. Nearly all of our really bad rows have been about bad sex (the wrong time, the wrong sort, the wrong feelings, the wrong wrongness) and I guess bit by bit my libido has simply thrown up it's hands and surrendered. Don't get me wrong, we still do it, but it's very much just occasional charity sex, where if I was allowed to, I would fall asleep afterwards for a couple of hours. Of course, our regime of housework, talks, childrens homework etc makes this absolutely out of the question.

I remember when sex used to be fun - for me at least. I'd think of it as like a meal, something to look forward to, something that made you feel good. Now, if I think of it at all it's just with guilt, sadness and regret. Guilt that I'm so bad at it, sadness that it seems to be over mostly for me and regret that I fucked everything up. And without sex, one really is cruising towards death. All that is left is the boredom and the physical decay.

Wah-hey!