Category: Old age of my youth – 2015

[This text was originally written as a pre-race trading note. Despite my belief that I wasn’t going to get anything from the event, or deserved to get anything out of it, I couldn’t help extracting an insight from it.

Briefly, pre-race trading is about the sometimes fast-paced buying-and-selling of bets in the five to ten minutes prior to mostly British horse races. Some people make hundreds of pounds every day by trading thousands of pounds. My hope at this stage was to make a few dollars every night, which came down to only making a few cents per trade.

I use terms that will mean nothing to most people, but “profit” and “loss” and “didn’t do what I should have done” – like getting out of the market before the race starts – are actually the only ideas that matter.

The optimism part comes in where the pre-race trader sometimes believes it will be okay if he doesn’t exit before the race starts – when prices start jumping around wildly which sometimes ends in your favour, and other times ends with you paying much more than you were hoping for.]

WEDNESDAY, 22 APRIL 2015

The worst of the $20.99 loss because I didn’t want to hedge for a 3-tick loss pre-race is that I learned nothing from it that I hadn’t already known. I’ve been getting closer and closer to this exact thing happening over the last few weeks. I no longer exited thirty seconds before the start. I was unwilling to exit for a loss if I couldn’t understand why the price was coming in. This was inevitable. I was just lucky that it didn’t happen last week, or the week before that. I should stop everything. End of the road. […] Delete everything. Uninstall the software. Take a few weeks to work out what you’re going to do instead. And what makes it hardest is that things have been going generally well. A $20.99 loss is 175 times my average profit.

(I layed at 6.8 on a tight range a little over two minutes before the race was due to start. The price dropped one tick, two ticks … then it came back. $118 before I could scratch, dipped again, two ticks, three ticks … “Wait for in-play” … Suspend. Nightmare: Within three seconds the price is 4.8 … 4.5 … 4.2 … 3.8 … There’s opposition but the price is still coming in! $10.00 loss … $13.00 loss … agh! … It’s just one mile, and the price is still coming in! He’s just crossed 2.0! Maximum liability is $29.00! Agh! Hedge! Hedge! Hedge! Out at 1.74, and only because he was beaten at the last moment, otherwise my loss would have been almost $30.00.)

THURSDAY, 23 APRIL 2015

What can you say when you burn your fingers for the seventeenth time because you thought it would be okay to take a hot pot from the stove with your bare hands? And you know you weren’t absent-minded. You know you were not in a hurry. Despite having seen how ugly and how painful such burns can be, you took the risk. What can you say?

* * *

Misplaced optimism.

Optimism is usually a good thing, but speculative trading on any market is one example of many where optimism has no place.

More than that, optimism in some situations can be fatal.

A car rolls forward to a 200-metre deep abyss. “I’m sure the car will stop before it gets to the edge” is an example of misplaced optimism – optimism that can cost you your life.

Someone grabs you in a parking lot, throws a bag over your head and pushes you into a car. “It’ll be okay once we arrive somewhere,” your optimism kicks in. When you are tied to a chair an hour later in a dark room and you are slowly tortured to death, you know – you should have kicked and scratched and fought like a possessed cat to get out of that car. Your optimism was misplaced. Your optimism is going to cost you your life.

Fact: there are situations where there is no room for optimism.

Any form of financial trading is a situation where optimism has no place. Before you turn on your computer and make your first transaction, it is of utmost importance to take your cheerful “Optimism rules!” hat off your head and replace it with your black “Pessimism’s where it’s at!” or “I’m a miserable pessimist” or “Pessimists make it to another day” hat.

Remember: Optimism when you trade can cost you 175 times your average profit in one transaction.

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WEDNESDAY, 25 MARCH 2015

Here is the trifecta of adult life success, as I interpret the views of the community at large – that is, most adults in your immediate environment, and/or your friends and family, and/or most of the people on your so-called Facebook friend list:

1. At least two children – one could have been a lucky shot; a second proves it wasn’t

2. More money that you need for basic survival – it doesn’t matter if you inherited the money or if you won it with a scratch card

3. You do something interesting – can be your career, or anything else that is more or less a challenge

If these criteria are accepted, I know very few truly successful people. I almost always see myself as less successful than most of my contemporaries because we don’t have children, and because I only make a little more money than I need for my survival. But I know quite a few people with two children, not much money, and they don’t do anything interesting; also people with money, but they have only one child, and they also don’t do anything that I will regard as moderately interesting.

MONDAY, 6 APRIL 2015

To move this discussion one step away from mere campfire talk, it has to be mentioned that there are a few exceptions that may upset this formula.

There is the case of wealthy parents who do interesting work and who lead interesting lives, but one of their three children becomes a murderer, or a drug addict, or both.

There is the man or woman with money, who leads an interesting life, who has two or three children, but who still falls victim to a midlife crisis and say things like, “I wanted to do so much more at this stage of my life.”

And then there is the father of two children, who earns a lot of money and who, at least in his own opinion does interesting work, whose daughter is friends with the daughter of the CEO of an international conglomerate, who often goes abroad for interesting projects and who owns a villa in the south of France. “Why can’t Dad make more money so that we can also spend summers in France?” is the kind of request that would cause the man to occasionally doubt whether he really does as well as he sometimes thinks he does.

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SATURDAY, 4 APRIL 2015

We get paid an average hourly rate of approximately US$20, or R235 per hour. We teach between three and six hours per day, with an hour or longer on the road between classes. Our incomes vary between R10,000 (US$850) and R20,000 (US$1,700) per month, although it can be a thousand rand more or a few thousand less. The month during which Chinese New Year is celebrated may see a reduction of as much as 40% of our usual income.

Most of our classes are part-time “contracts” – when you finish a course, there is no guarantee that a new course will immediately be assigned to you.

Our positions at the school are also part-time. This means when there is a public holiday, we don’t get paid. When we are sick, we may stay at home but we won’t get paid. If it rains too hard and the wind is too strong, all our classes may get cancelled and then we get paid less that month. When we go on vacation to visit our families we don’t get paid for those two weeks or so, but of course rent and bills still have to get paid. If a private student is sick or busy, or if he or she is not in the mood for speaking English that day, a class easily gets cancelled on short notice and then we make less money that month.

* * *

Our rent is about R6,500 (US$550) per month. My health insurance is about R300 (US$25) per month; my telephone bill and contributions to utilities are about R850 (US$70) per month. Living expenses are about R4000 (US$350) per month. My life insurance is almost R600 (US$50) per month. I pay about R850 (US$70) per month tax.

* * *

Since my early twenties I have known that I was not going to make it in middle-class suburbia. Moreover, I had no desire to achieve middle-class success. I had no immediate yearning to get married, settle down, have children, or start a career.

One might imagine I had more hedonistic motivations – to have fun, to seek adventure and so on. My actual motivation was considerably drabber: I needed to know the truth. I used to believe in things. By the age of 24 I believed in nothing but the realities of being alive and the inevitability of death.

The idea of committing myself to a career seemed vulgar, even ridiculous. I wanted … no, I needed to get away from the machine that was society in my eyes.

Unfortunately, by my mid-twenties I had accumulated a significant amount of student debt: modern life’s version of the medieval landlord’s hold on his serfs.

By the end of 1995 I opted for a third path between flight and middle-class suburbia. I went to South Korea for two years to teach English. After a stint back in South Africa in 1998 where I naively believed I was going to start fitting into middle-class society, I came to Taiwan.

Taiwan has worked out well for me in the last sixteen years. I earn enough money to survive and to travel to South Africa every two years or so to see my family. I have time to read and write. And against all odds and reasonable expectation, I met and got married to a wonderful woman.

* * *

Back in South Africa, my parents’ financial well-being has been caught up in a seemingly endless roller coaster ride. At times they have made a lot more money than me; at other times less.

Naturally, when they are in trouble, I want to help. For that, I need to make more money.

Here is where the irony kicks in: Despite the fact that I have always been comfortable with a Spartan lifestyle and that I have never been interested in participating in the mad dash for more money, I do not personally know anyone who has tried more ways to make money. The only things I haven’t tried are crime and prostitution.

The fact of the matter is that I am sick and tired of feeling bad because I don’t make more money. No matter what you do, at the end of the day a man who looks like an undertaker asks: “How much money do you have?” Then you try to explain, again. Nothing, he types on his computer. And as you lift your hand to object, he looks straight through you and gestures with a bony finger for the next person in line to step forward.

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WEDNESDAY, 25 MARCH 2015

On Friday, 13 March and Saturday, 14 March I made notes on the problem of having too many projects.

The last few days I’ve been thinking again about my failures, most notably the overall failure to generate a more decent income, and about my few successes – especially my writing, which, if it were commercially successful, it wouldn’t have been necessary to make this note.

This brings me to a question I have reflected on so many times that some professionals might say I am obsessed with it. Two things stand out as reasons why I am stuck on my current income:

1) Since 2006 I have continued a trend that started in 1999, and that is to take on too many projects (as I have already mentioned).

2) I don’t have good systems in place to manage these projects and even have them run 90% on auto-pilot.

At first I thought it was one reason or the other, but then I realised even if you only have one business or project, if you don’t have a good system to manage it, it will not be successful in the long run. And even if you have a good system for one or two different projects, you cannot continue taking on projects because good systems don’t fall out of the sky when you need them – they usually take time and effort and perhaps money to develop.

Thus, for each project or income-generating endeavour you take on, a well thought-out system is required to increase the probability of success to at least 50% if not better.

Thus, two: Good systems take time, effort and probably money to develop. You should therefore refrain from taking on projects if you do not have a good system to manage a new project and eventually put it on auto-pilot (if possible).

Thus, three: Focus on developing good systems, then work one project after another into the system machine, and then consider paying someone as supervisor or assistant to make sure the machine runs well.

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WEDNESDAY, 18 MARCH 2015

The word epiphany cannot be tossed about anytime you like. If I therefore say that “A few pleasant and unpleasant truths” from Friday, 13 March 2015 increasingly looks like an epiphany, I am clearly in a serious mood.

It also makes me feel like I’m in trouble. I have allowed myself to be seduced dozens of times over the years by optimism and faith in my own abilities. “Hey, that looks like something I can do!” was usually followed up with action without thinking about it too much. And before I could save myself from the edge of the abyss, I had started yet another project, committed myself to yet another job – more interesting books stacked in the proverbial bag that I couldn’t throw over my shoulder anymore.

I see other people who take on similar projects walk past me. “Good luck!” they shout over their shoulders as I taste their dust on a dry tongue. “Maybe your luck will turn one of these days!” someone else might add as an afterthought.

I am my own biggest resource. I am also the biggest obstacle on my road to success.

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