domdavis.com

…or how to throw away all your money in a very short space of time

I’ve rather got used to this not working lark. No commuting, no having to get up at ouch’o'clock in the morning, no deadlines, no politics. Of course, there is also the slight problem of no pay. Not an issue yet, but it will be in the coming months. Not that I’m worried, I’ve got enough cash behind me to last for months and I’m fairly confident I’ll be able to get another hideously overpaid job messing about programming. In the mean time I’ve been looking at alternative ways of making money and it would appear that spread betting is the way forward.

I have fairly modest goals for the short term (hell, if I can’t live off it it’ll at least give me pub money) and my research seems to indicate these are quite easily achievable. The proof of the pudding is, of course, in the eating. Legally I can’t make any financial spread bets until my contract with my former employer is terminated due to compliance reasons (gotta love the FSA) so for the next month I’ll be using Trade Fair’s demo application to see how much of their virtual £10,000 I can loose. Given the platform isn’t as good as many others (there are lots of niggles, plus the graphs are all 15 minutes out) if I can make money on that I should be able to make money with the real thing. If I loose money then it’s back to the drawing board. Early indicators are reasonably good although my prediction that Sainsbugs was going to tank on the various bits of news nearly bit me in the bum and the FTSE is going the wrong damn way. Up you bugger! Up!

Why is it everyone thinks I’m going to be bored in a couple of days? At the moment I don’t even have time to be bored. My mornings are taken up with lie ins, gym, tai chi, shopping, cooking, tidying, etc., and my afternoons should be filled with doing loads of little projects I want to do but are usually filled with seeing friends.

Take today for instance: Got up earlier than I would have liked (thanks mainly to the postman ringing my doorbell at 8:30), have been to the gym, been shopping, cooked a lovely lunch (curried, minced Clarrissa. Overdid it in the chillies just a tad but not too much), done some washing and now I’m sitting down for half an hour before doing a bit of tai chi, having a shower, heading to a friends house and having dinner there.

Yesterday and the day before I had to charge into London which I usually combine with hooking up with friends for lunch or coffee which takes up a good few hours of my day. I’ve got Cromer Zoo to go visit and photograph, friends to catch up with, clubs to go to (since Sedition closed my local club is now Rios in Leeds which is a fair trek), about 6 months worth of Java programming stuff to learn, certifications to get, photographs to catalogue, photographs to post, photographs to scan, at least one photo book to produce, a flat to paint, several programs to write, about 8 hours of Lost and Heroes to watch on my Sky+ box and 11 years worth of missed sleep to catch up on. I have less time now that I had when I worked

I can’t see me getting bored for a loooong time

You all seem convinced I should get a job outside of the city too. Na ah. The city pays WAY too much for me to go do anything else. Besides, if I was stuck in some run of the mill programming job earning what I would usually consider to be a tax bill I’d be bored senseless within 2 months. My mum once asked me a few years ago when we were having trouble getting something to work “Why don’t you buy a book on the subject?”. I couldn’t. There were no books on the subject and if anyone was going to write one I’d be the most qualified person to do so. There is something fun about being given a ridiculously vague spec and a hideously short time frame and at the end of it still producing something the business are happy with. I need to be challenged, and I also need to be rewarded for that challenge… but not for a few months

OK, so given notice, hot chocolate with old team mates, toddle over to Canary Wharf, hot chocolate with friend there (more about that in a mo), get home, fancy celebrating my lack of a job (but continued employment) so eschewed the gym and went for a pizza hut with a friend instead. Will go tomorrow morning (or afternoon if the postman is late again). In the mean time I’ll probably just snack on a stick of lard sprinkled with pure sugar. After all, we don’t want me getting all stupidly thin again do we?

Anyway, Canary Wharf. Stood there in full cliché*, Jas comes out, laughs at me and says “You didn’t go to see HR dressed like that did you?”. Yes, yes I did Black vans, black combats, t-shirt (’Keep out of direct sunlight’, was going to be ‘404 not found’ but I appear to have spilled half my breakfast down that so I had to change), full length leather coat, shades (think Matrix with long hair and you wont be too far wrong). After all this wasn’t an interview, it was just them formally telling me that in a few weeks time they want me to go away and here’s lots of money to do so quietly. I made an effort too, I put on a non threatening t-shirt and I didn’t turn up with one or more katana slung over my back Anyway, after about 10 seconds it was obvious to her I wasn’t going to be one of the disgruntled ones (why is it that people think that these huge organisations care about them as individuals? You’re a number, get over it) and despite the scary outfit all I really cared about was “how long do I get paid for? When is my last pay date? When do I get the money? How much is the money? Is there anything that will cause my to forfeit the money?”. You’ll spot a general theme there, but at the end of the day it’s why we get out of bed in the first place (don’t give me that crap about money doesn’t motivate you, given the choice of your job, or your job for an extra £20,000 a year I know which one you’d choose ).

* The first time I wore the full length leather coat Jason turned round and said “Did you just walk into a shop and order a cliché?”. The answer is, of course, no - it took several shops to put the whole clichéd ensemble together, but since then I’ve always referred to the coat as my cliché and doing the full black look with coat as full cliché. My last leather jackets was called ‘The Cow’. It finally got rid of it a couple of years ago as it was 10 years old and really didn’t fit me any more. It’s important to name leather jackets (we’re not talking fashion jackets here either).

So I’ve officially had notice served. Due to the length of time I’ve worked there my notice period is longer than I thought it was so I’m effectively getting another 8 weeks paid holiday instead of the 4 or so I was expecting. Given the two weeks I’ve just had we can, all in all, say that we are a most happy bunny. If I need to I can bring the termination date forward but, unless I get a very good offer from somewhere else, I don’t think I’ll be taking them up on that offer

And, no, no amount of jealousy or hatred is going to penetrate my shield of smugness. To the majority of you all I can say is: Ha! You’re at work

God I love my life sometimes

Today is going to be bitty and annoying. I’ve got to go all the way into London for a meeting with HR to get through the formal “we’re serving notice” thing which will last all of 15 minutes which, for a 2 and a half hour round trip, just seems a tad pointless. On the plus side I’ll be catching up with some friends for coffee (or in my case hot chocolate) which should push the stay in London into something more worthy of the trip. At some point I should really go to the gym too (especially given I’ll be having at least two hot chocolates today ) and a trip to the supermarket may well be in order as I’m out of milk and I really need to replace the flowers in the living room which are not even on their last legs any more. Hopefully tomorrow will be slightly more productive

So the postman finally turned up at about 11:30 which meant I could go shower and shop. In retrospect I should have shopped then showered as I would have missed the [thankfully light] rain and I was rather warm when I got back. Anyway, I decided to do a sausage casserole for lunch as I haven’t had one for ages and proceeded to make waaaay too much mash Not sure I’ll be having any dinner tonight.

I also applied for a job today. Should find out pretty soon if they want to interview me as it’s at my old place and they’re fast tracking my application. Was in two minds over applying as it’s a job I can do and looks interesting, but would mean no big payout

Yesterday, during a particularly relaxing piece of lounging around just before heading to Tai Chi I had the crazy idea that perhaps I didn’t need to find a new job. You see, I write applications for investment banks. These applications then go on to allow them to make oodles of money. They, in turn pay me oodles of money (until they go and loose it all on some stupid scheme and fire everyone, but that’s beside the point). Why not cut out the middle man and write applications for myself. In short, why not become an Algo Trader at home?

In theory the whole scheme is disgustingly simple. You take live, realtime market data, run it through a set of algorithms and have the program buy and sell trades for you. Provided the algorithm is sound you make money. Of course the devil is in the detail. How do I get a real time market feed that I can access programatically rather than using someone else’s software? How much does it cost? Do any brokers provide direct access to their trading systems?

I know it can be done in theory, hell, I’ve written large chunks of an Interest Rate Swap electronic trading platform before I just need to find out what it’s like in practice. Anyway, today I’m doing some research into it and hopefully I’ll have some books on the subject arriving tomorrow.

I’ve created a Search Agent on my erstwhile employers jobs board which means I’ll get daily notifications of the 4 posts they have open that I’m not qualified to do. Still, it makes this part of the job hunting process easier. Once my ‘Individual Consultation Period’ is up I can then start looking for jobs elsewhere. Looks like I’m going to become doley scum