Dom Davis (The Blog)

You¹ sit the other side of the office to me, and yet your music is on so loud I can actually identify the song you’re listening to from the sound being leaked from your headphones. Either buy better headphones or turn it down. It can’t be doing your hearing any good at all and it’s annoying the hell out of me. *bum tish bum tish bum tish*

In the interim I shall plug myself into my headphones which a) don’t leak any sound so I can listen to my iPod with it turned up to 11 without annoying people and b) stops sounds from the outside world from leaking in meaning I don’t need to crank up the iPod to 11 unless I want something to be deafeningly loud.

¹There’s two of you actually, thankfully not both at the same time

My commute into work involves the use of a very rural railway line. Two trains ply the route, much of which is single track, pass at North Walsham where there is a handy bit of doubled up track for precisely that, get to the end of the line, turn round, come back. Lather, rinse, repeat. This setup has some advantages; except for a tiny bit at the Norwich end, there is only ever one other train that can get in your way (and they can and do turf everyone off to wait for the next train and send the empty train back if things get too out of whack); similarly signal failures aren’t a massive problem as there are only 2 trains to co-ordinate; also it’s a quiet line so I always get a seat, often by myself. The downside is when things go wrong you can easily get delayed an hour waiting for the next train and if a train goes out of service all he’ll breaks loose. Especially if it breaks down on a bit of single track, unable to move so nothing can get past.

This morning the train glided [glode?] into the station without the usual rumble of it’s diesel/electric engine. This is never good. 10 seconds later there is a roar, the engine restarts, all appears to be well. 5 minutes later the engine cuts out again, we glide into Roughton Road station, I start to wonder if we’ll leave. Lo and behold the engine restarts, big roar, we pull off…

200 meters outside of Gunton engine dies. Coast in. Restart…

And so on at every station. Most disconcerting. So the question is was this a defective train which limped from Cromer to Norwhich; a novice driver who kept stalling the engine; or some new operating procedure to save money?

It was with some trepidation I left the office this afternoon and checked the train times. I had visions of a failed train blocking the line, or one train out of service meaning chaos and me getting home late. Thankfully all appears to be working fine. The train has arrived, the engine is running and (touch wood) in 45 minutes or so it’ll disgorge me onto Cromer station, platform 1.

I find it quite sad just how quickly I’ve adjusted from my nice life of playing working at home and it’s commute of… lets go wild here, lets call it a whole 2m, to my resumed life of commuting for over an hour to and from a real office where I do a full days work. Once again my weeks are a blur of get up, breakfast, shower, get on the train, walk to the office, work, walk to the station, get the train home, cook, eat, watch some TV, snuggle with the Zozo, sleep with the weekend providing blissful respite at the end. I’ve got so used to just keeping my head down and slogging it to the end of the week that this week I actually lost site of when that was. The combination of the 4 day Easter weekend and a day off tomorrow to do the last day of my photography course meant that somewhere I’ve lost a day.

I discovered I’d got out of whack when my boss asked me to give an update since I wasn’t in tomorrow. I told him that I was in tomorrow and it was Friday that I was out. His retort was to claim that tomorrow was indeed Friday which I was forced to poo-poo since that would make today Thursday. It was pointed out to me that, yes, it was Thursday which was met by incredulity by me. He once again assured me that it was Thursday which was finally confirmed by my consulting iCal for the current day… and then my iPhone just in case my laptop was wrong… and then Outlook on my work computer just in case it was an error with Macs and/or Mac programs.

The realisation that it wasn’t 16:50 on a Wednesday with a whole 9 and a half hours left to finish up what I was working on before the weekend and was in fact 16:50 on a Thursday with a scant 30 minutes to finish what I’d been working on caused a number of feelings to collide in my head.

Firstly there was panic that I’d gone from being ‘quite behind’ at work to ‘seriously behind’ and I’d have a job on just to leave everything in a state where I could pick it up again easily on Monday. Secondly there was feelings of embarrassment that I had vehemently argued it was yesterday without checking my facts, and indeed doubting the facts when they were thrust in my face. Thirdly there was feelings of relief and joy that it was now (or very soon to be) The Weekend™. Needless to say the latter feeling won out, I spent my remaining 30 minutes quickly trying [and failing] to finish off, hand off or otherwise park everything I was doing before grabbing my bag and legging it. I’m still waiting for it to sink in that the working week is over.

My new job is 15 minutes walk from the station in Norwich which, unlike London, puts it a little out of the way. I couldn’t even tell you where the nearest Starbucks is, Pret has to be over 10 minutes walk and I don’t even know if Eat exists outside of London. While there are analogs closer we’re still looking at a 5 minute walk before you get to a news agent and sandwich vending establishments.

There is, of course, the ubiquitous Sandwich Man, which I think is now mandated by European legislation offices over a certain size, who comes at 11ish and apparently we have access to a canteen over the road that supplies overpriced, badly cooked food to another company and is quite happy to rip off employees from surrounding places which I’ve been warned off.

I discovered all this on my first day, choosing the sandwich man (prawn in maryrose sauce bap, crisps) and being quite impressed with his fayre.

Tuesday I brought a packed lunch. Cheaper and much better for me, plus the paucity of snack vending establishments nearby means I can’t easily supliment my lunch with crap and defeat the object.

Wednesday was a team lunch so we went out for food, Thursday and Friday I was off.

Monday there was no bread (we’d been away and not got round to shopping) so I had a tuna and red onion sarnie with crisps from the sandwich man.

Today I made my lunch, put it in my shiny new lunch box and promptly left it in the kitchen. Sandwich man again for me then. Hopefully by the end of the week I’ll get into the habit of packing my lunch and actually remember to bring it. As it is tomorrows lunch will be today’s lunch rescued out of the fridge (if I remember :S )

Since my records began (over 3 years ago) I have handed over somewhere in the region of £15,000 to the rail companies, mostly National Express East Anglia, formerly One. At the end of my London career I was handing over £361 per month for the privelidge of sitting on the floor in the foyer of London bound intercities and a further £40 a week to get to and from Cromer and my Tai Chi classes. Tot that lot up and it comes to over 6 grand a year. Even when I was working from home it was costing me £80+ every time I went to London (thankfully only a few times a month).

Between stopping work and now I must have spent £50 on the trains tops (which actually equates to quite a few trips as it’s only £6.20 return to Norwich off peak) which is a much better state of affairs. This changed yesterday when I handed over £1436 for an annual season ticket. It’s the cheapest season ticket I’ve had since I lived in Zone 2, something I was quite pleased about… which just goes to show how numb I’ve become the cost of rail travel.

The last few months I’ve been working The Zozos shift patterns and working from home, with the last couple of months being self employed. Weekends, as a concept, dissapeared and there were just days working and days off. Days working were 8-3:30 with zero commute. Mondays were a thing of the past.

All that came to an end this morning when a Monday suddenly hoved into view and I had to go rejoin the commuterate.

Thankfully I’m being eased into it. 3 day week this week with a nice 4 day weekend… although there’s a Monday lurking behind that. I can tell.

It’s going to be odd. I’m used to being able to potter about, nip to the shops, do my shopping on a daily basis and cook for The Zozo when she gets home to a warm house with a lit fire. Poor old Zo is now going to be comming back to a cold house where she’ll have to build and light her own fire and then either eat alone or starve until I come home. At least with this job I’m not being woken up at 5:45, I’m getting home well before 19:45 and I don’t have to fight for a seat

Spread betting is basically betting on the movement of stocks, currencies and the like. I used to do Forex trading betting on the exchange rate between the US Dollar (USD) and the Euro (EUR). The exchange rate is quoted as, for example, 1.5250 which means that €1 buys you $1.5250. You’re betting on the final digit ticking up and down, so a £1 spread bet means that for every 100th of a cent (point) the exchange rate moves you make (or loose) £1, and move they do. The Forex market is stupidly huge and those numbers change constantly, sometimes by 10 or 20 over the space of 10-15 minutes, sometimes by 100′s.

Despite the name, spread betting isn’t quite gambling. A reasonable strategy and good risk management will make you money. Lets assumed your strategy wins 40% of the time. That’s loosing on 6 out of 10 trades. You will risk an amount, £X and try to make £2X. Over 10 trades, on average, you’ll loose £6X (you’ve lost 6 times) and win £8X (you’ve won 2X 4 times). That’s a profit of £2X. X also wants to be about 2% of your total trading capital so you can loose up to 50 times in a row before being out completely.

When I started I started small. I was betting 10p per point with trades being placed for minutes rather than hours or days. The way spread betting works you’re automatically down when you enter a trade. With EUR/USD I’d be down 2 points, or 20p before anything had happened. I’d set my trade up so if it went another 28 points in the wrong direction to get me out of the trade. This would loose me £3 tops.

Quite often (in fact most of the time) the trade would go the wrong way to start with. I’d often see my 20p loss grow to £1 or £1.50 before it headed in the right direction again. Eventually it would break even, then start making a profit. More often than not the profit would then start to get eroded, sometimes heading back to break even, or maybe even a small loss, before moving to greater profit. So my bet would start at -20p, move to -£1.50, head to £0, go on to £1, head back to £0, go on to £3, back to £1, then to £5, back to £4, on to £7 and so on and so forth. My goal here is £6 since I’ve risked £3.

The way I worked would be to change the trade when it got to £2 or £3 in profit so that my trade would automatically be closed if it went back to break even. I’m now risk free. Each time it gains £1 in profit I move the point where it would automatically get closed by £1. Sometimes I would think that it couldn’t go up any more, cash in, and be happy. Other times I’d ride it as far as I could and have the trade closed by the automatic stop. Doing this I could make £15 or more in a trade which is much more than my target. Quite often I’d get two of those in a row netting me £30 in a day. Sometimes I’d have a bad day, but it was only £6 down. The problem was, even with making 3 or 4 times my risked X, with things averaged out I was only making £9-£12 per 10 trades which was 3-5 days worth of trading. I needed to scale up and that’s where things started going wrong.

I scaled up by 100 times. Instead of 10p per point I traded £10. That’s £300 risked with my strategy, and a gain of £600 every 10 trades assuming everything goes as planned.

So the trade is on. I’m automatically down 2 spots so I’m at -£20. Things go the wrong way to start off with so could go to £100 or £150 down before moving back towards break even. Despite the trade going in exactly the same way as before physically, psychologically I’m panicking. £150 is a lot of money. As it heads to £0 my nerve breaks and I close out the trade as soon as it starts turning a positive profit, possibly just a fraction of a point, netting me £3/£5 or £8. That’s all well and good but if I make a loosing trade I’m £300 down and I need to make 60 winning trades at £5 per trade to make it up. That kind of winning doesn’t happen.

Even when I could hold the course and watch the profits rise I need to be banking £600 minimum. I watch the profits rise to £100, then it reverses and heads towards £0 again. With the smaller stake I take this in my stride and sit tight because I’m pretty sure it’ll go back up again. Now I’m watching my £100 become £90… £80… £70… will it stop or will it keep going to -£300? My nerve breaks, I bail at £50. Sounds like a good profit, but I still need to make 6 winning trades for every losing trade to break even and that isn’t going to happen.

No matter what I tried I couldn’t get passed the fear of loosing vast sums of money when the bigger amounts were in play. I’d even do trades on two accounts, one at £10 per point, one at 10p per point. I’d bail with the £10 account, let the 10p run and watch as it made me £6, £10, £15. That’s £600, £1000, £1500 IF I’d let the £10 account run.

So you get yourself worked up. YOU ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT INTERFERE WITH THE TRADE. You set it up so it’s completely automatic. You’ll walk away with a £300 loss of a £600 gain. Nothing else is allowed. Problem is there is a 60% chance you’re going to walk away with the loss (possibly more so as you’re worked up and not thinking about things as rationally as perhaps you should). I did it a few times and each time I lost. I’d not done enough trades to see my 40% wins, was down hundreds and doubt has now kicked in. I started second guessing my trades, deliberating too much, waiting too long and entering trades too late, resulting in more losses. You have to remember that 6 losses in a row still doesn’t mean your system isn’t working and means you’ve lost £1,800. You could make that back and more in your next 4 trades. But then again you might not.

So there is my problem. I can make money with spread betting, quite easily. I just can’t make very much. As soon as the numbers get to any appreciable value (much more than 50p per spot) I freeze, make mistakes or just bail too early. The Fear just gets in the way. unfortunately the trading system I use is very subjective. I can automate getting out of the trade once it’s on but there is no way to automate entering the trade. If I could work out how to do that I’d make a fortune.

As it was my spread betting experience has left me roughly breaking even. My small gains over a few months were wiped out by a few bigger losses as I ramped things up. I’ve withdrawn most of the money from my trading account now, but there’s still some in there because I do still enjoy trying to diving the vagueries of the financial markets.

On Monday The Zozo spotted a job ad that not only matched a large number of my skills but that also looked like it could be quite fun.

Tuesday I had spoken to the agent, found more about the job and sorted a date for the interview.

Thursday I had the interview.

Friday I had the job. I start in a week or so. Funny how things turn out.