Since April 1st of this year, I have been working from home, making and losing money in the volatility and insanity that is the global equity markets. It's a blast, thanks for asking, and I have to say there are some interesting aspects to my new life. Hey, I have a unique and original idea, how about I share these life nuggets (now only three bucks a metric ton) with you.
Whoever said that hard work is its own reward is a lying chunk of chemical runoff in the overworked, flooded game preserve of life. Some days I work sixteen hours only to come to a conclusion, act on it and promptly lose money. Other days I wake up late only to discover that sleeping in made me a tidy chunk of change. If the world is indeed a stage then call me Captain Improvisation.
Some days I have all my positions in unsettled cash. This is basically when you trade your positions and get in and out so quickly that you must wait three days before you get to play again. Some would say this is a great time to do research and analyze mistakes. Others would go to the beach and get drunk. But with three days off, what I like to do is spend two days drunk at the beach and then spend the last day doing as much research as possible. It really doesn't matter what you do when you can't do anything though (now that last sentence, boys and girls, was madly tautological). Fortunately for me, there's no work to block me from goofing off during business hours. Not to be too graphic, but I think I'm developing calluses.
I kind of miss people. Writers, as a rule, are generally not the most sociable creatures. I've never had much use for rules. Or for writers for that matter, but I digress. As much as I used to be sick of dealing with the problems of seventy people per day every day, the other end of that extreme, seeing no one at all, is equally frustrating. I've been talking to myself a lot. And I've learned something about myself in the process: even my internal monologue is a smartass. But at least I can tell myself to shut up and not get into trouble.
People don't know shit about global markets. This never used to bother me before because I spent so much time at work explaining markets to people that I would dread talking shop with other market schmucks at happy hour afterwards, but now that I've no one to talk to I find myself explaining markets to people who really don't care. One of my friends will ask me how my day was and I'll start talking about how the unwinding of QE2 woke up the zombie markets and turned them into jittery headline-reactive markets and I will be told to shut up. Don't get me wrong, people always tell me to shut up but it usually had to do with me directly insulting them. And I guess that's the upside: a scarcity of people to talk to has made me more polite to those who choose to talk to me. The downside: no one chooses to talk to me. Win some, lose some.
Working from home every day is also a constant reminder that my home was never really designated to be the kind of environment one should live in. Sleep, sex and the occasional baseball game on television were all I ever did here before and now that I'm here all day and every day I have come to the conclusion that this place is kind of filthy, doesn't air out well and lacks decoration. I'd fix that but it's easier to just move.
Self motivation is a bitch. It really is. At my job, sometimes I would oversleep and someone would call me and make sure I got into work. Hell, I had people reminding me to get haircuts and call my mom on Mother's Day. Now all I have is me, and I can be really easy on myself (when I'm not giving myself calluses, that is).
Anyway, you never asked and probably don't care but I figured I'd give you this life update anyway because I'm sick of staring at graphs and there's nothing good on television and tapping these keys beats cleaning my apartment.
You can thank me later, now or not at all. Just so long as you understand that I will not give you stock tips unless you buy me a drink.