Todays P&L: GBP 2,750

Todays booze: 3 litres of dry cider, 3 large Vodkas, 1 bottle of Vega Sicillia Unico 1989

Well so much for staying sober, at least I am not back on the Absinthe...yet. I am making a living salary again at last, although you can't really call it that untill you average over £5k per day for at least several months. Why the turn around in my trading fortunes? I am not sure, I assume it has something to do with the fact that I no longer have any faith in capitalism anymore. The US that bastion of capitalism has proven itself to be no better than the previous holder of that title, the UK.

America is allowing its manufacturing heartland to die while it allows the banking sector to openly mock the gowernment by accepting TARPS money and then when the conditions seem a little uncomfortable duck out of it. Meanwhile the Obama sideshow is still wandering around the globe accepting the plaudits for being the first black President. Well done mate, but sooner or later you are going to actually address the problems affecting your nation, which seems in terminal decline.

I should be happy, I have a girlfriend in my life as well as a few ex-girlfriends trying to get back in contact with me. However happiness is not a state I am naturally comfortable with. I am still unwell but I have given up worrying about that. My GP who also happens to be an MP has made it quite clear that his expenses are far more of a concern to him than the health of his patients. If you are a drunk, by the way, don't ever admit it to the quacks. As far as they are concerned, once you admit to being on the grog every illness that you may have is explained by your intake of booze!

Fraud

Todays P&L: GBP800
Todays booze: 4 litres of dry cider

I feel like a fraud. I started writing this to document my inevitable self-destruction and my general ambivalance to the world and what has happened? I have survived an emergency hospitalisation and an ex-girlfriend has got back in touch with me after fifteen years. Why anyone would want to meet me again I am not sure, one things for sure I am not the man I used to be - but then who of us is? So I guess my rocketride to death, without actually commiting suicide, (its that whole Catholic thing), has been put on hold for a while. I might even get serious about trading again, rather than just making enough money to get battered. All depressing stuff - but look on the bright side, she might realise her mistake and ditch me. Giving me a real reason to wallow in self-pity.

On a brighter note, I caught a television program called Elvis - Return to Tuplo, the other day. Man I forgot how great he was! The boy could sing and he could move. Forget about all that talent show crap that is in the charts today and check out vintage Elvis in 1956. No Echoplex Harmonisers or Lexicon Reverbs then. Just the voice and the microphone. I know it is popular to slate Elvis now and say he stole black music but John Lennon said it best, "before Elvis, there was nothing".

Todays P&L: Nothing at all
Todays booze: 3 large Vodka & Tonics - its only lunch time, I am just getting started!

So that was Christmas. Bah, Humbug! I didn't find myself all overwhelmed with love and peace for my fellow man and I have realised that being unable to trade for even 48 hours is causing me serious problems. Another example of my addicitve personality I guess. The UK government seems to be wholeheartedly supportive of the gambling industry, although I suspect they will turn on it just as they did with cigarettes and booze after exploiting it for all the tax revenue they can.

I am wondering why customers here in the UK even bother repaying their debts to the banks, which are largely nationalised now anyway. Even the banks that haven't taken Government aid are exchanging their worthless securitised paper for gilts! The banks seem to be under the impression that it was just bad luck and circumstances beyond their control that caused these huge losses. Funny that when you use that argument for being unable to repay your credit card debt the banks look the other way and slap a CCJ on you quicker than you can say Ebeneezer Scrooge. I remember those halcyon days when bankers attracted press because of their lifestyles. Anyone remember the 3 Barclays Capital Markets Risk analyts that ran up a £40,000 plus lunch bill at Petrus? The unkind press attention ensured that the lost their jobs bit of a shame really, Barclays really could use some decent risk managers now!

The financial climate has changed so much for anyone who remembers how it used to be, If I had told you two years ago that the 5 Wall Street houses of the holy would no longer exist and that AIG and Fannie May and Freddie Mac would be nationalised I would have been laughed out of the room. And the US, once a capitalist nation apparently, would be prepared to bail-out its worthless industrial titans whatever the cost. It is unthinkable and the scam only works as long as nobody calls on the US to show its cards. We are in a situation where investors are so scared that they actually are paying to lend money to the US. Forget the effects of inflation, 2 year notes have a 98 handle on their yield. The US is effecively printing money without any fiscal responsibility - this can only end badly.

Todays P&L: Hey, it's Christmas
Todays Booze: 1 litre Russian Standard Vodke, 8 pints of dry Cider, 3 cans of Stella Artois

Ok, so the doctors orders didn't last, but you know I feel better than I have in ages being back on the hard stuff. The quacks have said I am dying anyway, so what difference does it make? I have been to Church and recieved absolution, now I just have to make myself worthy.

As far as the markets go, well over December I have had a wild, wild ride. the most I earned was £5,000 in one day and the most I lost £3,000 so I guess I am up. Despite my loving this crazy volatility I am a little disturbed. I genuinely believe that we are heading into a depression that will easily rival that great depression. Even if the clowns in charge mange to band aid things up for a while, the opening of the taps of liquidity have unleashed a dragon of inflation that will flex its coils around us. Bernanke, Paulson, Darling and the likes are only interested in buying time so the problems are those of the next guy in the job. I pity poor Obama because I genuinely believe he will be held responsible for a collapse in the US economy that has nothing to do with him.

The myth of globalisation is becoming apparant all to quickly as the USA and Europe sink into recession, the idea that the BRIC, (Brazil, Russia, India, China), countries will take up the baton is being exposed as a cruel joke. All of these countries are unstable, Russia is of course the joker in the pack. It defaulted in 1998 and I remember a Credit Suisse banker saying to me "we will never trade with these clowns again" but the lure of easy money was too much. Now a country that had the 3rd largest foreign currency reserves has expended nearly 40% in a couple of months trying to defend the Ruble...pathetic. And as for the middle-east forget it. Those fools have squandered their resources quicker than a drunk duke on his birthday. Saudi and Dubai have been chasing which country had the highest skyscraper, the way that in previous oil-booms they chased Park Lane hookers and US or European jet fighters.

So what next? My belief is get ready for the hard times, I don't know how many of us are prepared for in-between years economics. Who am I to speak, I can't even change a plug and when I lived in Indonesia and Thailand I had maids and workers to do everything for me. I did see this coming though, and while everyone is hoping for better times next year, I can only see that the fiscal irresponsibility has placed any bright light further away.

Still here

Todays P&L: GBP -380
Todays Booze: 4 tins of Stella Artois

Quite a light drinking day for me, but then I am under doctors orders! Since the last time I blogged I have been hospitalised, the quacks think it is my excessive drinking - but that can't be, drink is my best friend - it has never let me down before.

I can't get a grip around these markets - it seems the end is nigh, I mean who would have thought that the UK would have to partly nationalise 3 of the largest banks? And what about our American cousins, America the home of capitalism, well it might seem that the nationalisation of Fannie May and Freddie Mac and AIG, (nationalisation in all but name), smacked of socialism. Look deeper however and you will see the truth of capitalism. Paulson and the increasingly clownish Bernanke are bailing out the rich overpaid bankers and excessively wealthy and springing the bill on the doltish middle-class. The people who are losing the most in this financial crisis are the soft underbelly of American society. It is the same in the UK but it just staggers me how easy it is to bamboozle supposedly educated people into beliving this is the best way this could be handled.

I Was Born Under A Wandering Star

Yesterdays P&L: GBP287.00
Yesterdays Booze: 70cl Imperial Standard Russian Vodka, 3 x Large Gordons Gin & Tonic, 6 pack of Heineken Lager.

Lee Marvin on the juke box - Wandering Star! I often wonder about all the travelling I have done, it seems so natural to me. Even though my parents tried to give some stability to our lives, my family feels like it is fluid, in constant motion. So it was natural for me to be restless.

I have travelled a lot, Africa, South & Central America, North America, Europe (of course) and mostly in Asia. I love travelling and I still get a thrill when I am on a plane or ship heading somewhere. I realised fairly quickly that I am not the back-packer type, well actually I am to a certain extent, a friend in Indonesia once said to me you are the first 5 star backpacker I ever met. You see, I like to go off the beaten track, but I do like to travel in style. I enjoy staying in top hotels and flying first or business class. But then I also enjoy going to the dodgier parts of town and hanging out in the less salubrious places.

When I was based in Bangkok , I travelled to most of the regional hot-spots, (Ho Chi-Minh, KL, Singapore, Penang, Bali, Jakarta, Hong Kong), with regularity but I also liked to visit places such as Yangon, Manilla, Pnohm Pen, Guangdong, Pusan and lots of Indonesian towns that I am well acquainted with. The problem with going to so many places is that you forget how special they are. I have never been much of a tourist in terms of buying local bric-a-brac and taking photographs but I often wonder if perhaps I should have been. Many of the places I have been and the things I have seen will never exist in that form again. The world is changing and it is certain to change the places we visit. When I went to Shanghai, Pudong was little more than a swamp, but you only have to look at a photograph of it now to see the changes 12 years have made. I remember climbing up the ancient Hindu temple of Borabadur in Java to see the sun rise, all the Japanese tourists gasped and took pictures I had a nice cold drink, (booze of course). I remember being alone in the officers bar of the ship my father worked on leaning over the deck and stairwell outside Apapa quay in Lagos, Nigeria. The city behind me and the odd purple phosphorus glow of the water surrounding the ship - Heartbeat City by The Cars playing to me.

I often think that I am so unlucky to not see what will happen in the future, you know - will it be like what the movies tell us, but at the same time I feel sorry for the people who will never see the world as it was before this globalisation. Never be able to see countries like Thailand before it became a charter destination.

Fridays P&L: GBP198.00
Yesterdays Booze: 70cl Imperial Russian Vodka, 2 x Bombay Sapphire Martinis, 3 x 500ml Stella Artois, 70 cl cheap French white wine.

So another day, another dollar, the bad feelings in the markets continue. The rumours on Friday where that Merrill Lynch is going to post as much as USD15bn in credit related write-downs and that Citibank is going to post a similar number, despit both institutions claiming they had drawn a line under their losses in the 3rd quarter. These numbers are staggering and unsurprisingly, both institutions are supposedly trawling Asia and the Middle-East for additional capital investment. No doubt the market will respond positively to foreign investment in these companies, but surely America should be questioning itself. For years America has been shifting itself from an industrial economy to a service orientated economy. The financial sector is a key part of the information based economy that the US sees as key to maintaining its pre-eminent position in the world. And yet key components such as Citi and Merrill are being sold piecemeal to foreign governments. It may be too early to count America out, but it is difficult to see where the future of the US is if a worst-case style depression occurs. The phenomenal wealth generated post WW2 may dissapate, just as the baby-boomers need it most. If the government decides to lower rates to kick-start the economy and US treasuries lose their attractiveness to investors then the US will be exposed to inflation and currency devaluation. I have been in a few countries that experienced hyper-inflation and one thing is clear is that the most affected are the middle-class. The USA is ill-placed to withstand a genuine attack of inflation and while I am not quite as doom and gloom laden as legendary investor Julian Roberts, I can see this as being one of the most trying times for the most important economy in the world.