Translate

Friday, December 21, 2012

Thoughts for the Holidays

The last few weeks have been a big challenge for me - seem to have slid into a cycle of depression. One never knows what brings these cycles on. I just don't seem to be making any progress on a lot of fronts and this is raising my frustration levels. I do suffer from what the psychologists call a low frustration threshold. Failing (or not succeeding to my standards) at a few things does not help.

Taken a while to recover from the passing of my friend, Cate Clewett who died a few weeks back following an extended struggle with cancer. I went to her funeral - with 500 people in the church for the service, I got to thinking about the impact one makes in life. I was wondering how many people would come to my funeral and what they would say. I can tell you it would not be 500 people unless one found a way to magically transport people around the world from all the places I have lived in. You see, Cate grew up in the suburb the church was in; she went to the local school next door to the church; she went to high school down the road; she went to university in the city; she lived and worked down the road. For me the failure is I have not made enough friends in each of the places I have lived in - because I have always been moving, I protect myself from future pain by not making friends. Cate's funeral was a strong reminder to me to keep in touch with the people I do make as friends. The wake was a good opportunity to put some of that in place with reconnections made to Cate's husband (Gene) and a few other mutual friends. the other big action step coming out of cate's untimely passing (she was just 60 and had been ill over the 12 years i have known her) was to nominate a Breast Cancer charity as one of the two charities my businesses will support. We have some great initiatives here in Australia and also some great research capability - I will find a charity that supports research - that way the benefits can spread wider than these shores.

I did attend a 40th birthday party for a former colleague (Tom Sonnen) last week. This was a grand example of not keeping in touch. the last time I saw Tom he was in his 20's. easy to make excuses as he moved from London to San Francisco before I moved from London to Sydney. I last saw his wife, Amy, even further ago than that. The bad part of the story is that Tom and Amy moved to Sydney about 18 months ago and I have not made one single call to plan to meet up. I guess I am a whole lot more comfortable writing rather than phoning. We had a grand birthday party as it was a chance for me to catch up with a few other former colleagues. The others i had seen more recently - for example, had dinner with Ron Chernin in Bangkok a couple of years ago when we were living there. Sad to say, Ron has been in Sydney a while now.  The best part of the party was meeting Tom's daughters. Jade especially impressed me - at age 11 she was very switched on to the value and importance of life.

She was explaining to me the 5 keys to a successful life:
  • Getting along
  • Resilience
  • Persistence
  • Organisation
  • Confidence
She could articulate how each applied in different situations - e.g., if you were being bullied at school; if you had a lot of jobs that needed doing.  I did suggest she add a few - imagination/creativity will be key to making changes to life if things are not working as well as you like was one.  I was cross examined about what I do. When I explained that I no longer had a job or needed a job, she was a little taken aback. She did say that if she was in that psotion she would like to travel the world a bit and write books - to create things. Very switched on young lady and a delight.  Made me happy to be in her presence.

My daughter received her final results for her Higher School Certificate and her university admission score (called an ATAR) this week. With an ATAR of 96.3 she is in the top 5 % of all students in the state. That means she will be able to do the university course of her choice. It also brings to an end a chapter of schooling as all 3 of my children have competed school. there is no doubt that Katherine carries the 5 keys to success that Jade talked about - I just need to find a way to bring that back into my life.



I have been able to get on the bicycle and have put in a few kms of training with 4 rides completed since my last post. The plan is to ride 3 or 4 days a week with rides of about one and a half hours for a couple of weeks. Then I hope to be able to add in one longer ride a week. We are blessed to be living close to one of the National Parks which makes a large part of each ride a traffic free experience. Weather has been a bit strange - one hot day followed by one cool day. Riding the cool days is working well for me. It's all a bit strange as we are in an El Nino cycle - the low temperatures are not consistent with that though the lack of rain is. The big challenge - displace a few surplus kilograms from my waistline (currently weighing in over 90kgs).


FX trading continues to be a problem. Have lost 13% of my main trading account over the last 3 months (in roughly equal proportions). Last week was a great example - I made about 5% in the first couple of days after recovering a 1% loss on the first trade of the week. I promptly then gave almost all back to the market on Friday. 2 trading rules in place not followed - no trading on Fridays is one; the other is no trades on Monday until full review of market is done. It is not all bad: My trading robot is up 4.4% for the month (has a maximum of 3% at risk at any time). My outsourced service produced 2.4% in the first month and is up 4% this month so far.

Have pretty well got my personal investment portfolio in place for the expected big market moves. With the view that the US would find a solution for the Fiscal Cliff, the portfolio positioning was looking really good. The news today that the House of Representatives had delayed voting on the Fiscal Cliff matter has put a bit of a dent into all that positioning. The worst part is I have a few option contracts expiring at the end of December - they were in positive territory and now are not - prices have dropped dramatically. Luckily we have a few days to go. Just sitting tight here heopiong that the US Govt does more than kick the can down the road a little way. That would place the time element of my options-based strategy at some considerable risk.

Hard to pass through this weeks affairs without mentioning the Newtown, Connecticut massacre.  That so many young people should lose their lives in this way beggars belief. What has heartened me is the ground swell of support that is growing to tackle the gun issue in the United States. There are always a set of factors that drive these sorts of events which are linked in a much more complicated web than we ever can fathom (or the journalists will never dig into). Fareed Zakareer writing for the Washington Post summed it up quite well in his article The Solution to Gun Violence by comparing the rate iof gun homicides across countries adn comparing also social factors that drive aberrant behaviour. His conclusion is that it is not the social behaviours that are the problem, it is the access to guns. Having lived through the troubled times in South Africa when it was easy to buy an AK47 assault rifle on the street for $10, I can relate to what he is saying. I was exposed to a sinister side to that story too. I posted a tribute on Facebook to one of the teachers (Victoria Soto) who laid down her life to protect the children. I copped a heap of abuse from a Facebook friend about the fact that we did not tribute the loss of life in Afghanistan in the same way; about he American way and about the fact that my post was a publicity stunt. I was not happy - so much for the freedom to speak.

Well we are into the final days before the holidays. We have survived the end of the current round of the Mayan calendar. Now it is time to hope that the US House of Representatives reminds themselves that their obligation is to the world economy, not just the US political scene and hope we all have a happy holiday. For me it is time to take stock of all the things that have passed me by this year and to reflect on a year that has had its moments, continues to have its moments but has been filled with a lot of love from close and afar.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Tough getting focused

I wrote last in June this year and mentioned the word FOCUS. As I look back on the last 5 months in which Lorraine has been back at work and at what I have actually achieved it does not feel like a lot.

I seem to be making a lot of mistakes

  • Invested in too many Internet Marketing programmes: the market is full of compelling offers and there are so many new ways emerging to do things. I have more gizmos than you can shake a stick at in the realms of affiliate marketing and traffic generation and niche website projects. The time has come to put the resources to full use and to make it stick. There are some successes going on here. I have outsourced my Twitter management for 3 accounts and D4USocial are doing a good job building followers for @MarkSCarrington and @Stratocharge and @Go4ForexProfits. I have started my program for building Facebook traffic - just need to follow up to complete that process. It is all a bit dependent on building the website properties. I have changed direction a little on some of those properties principally because the affiliate products did not stack up that well.  Progess is happening on http://www.go4forexprofits.com (RSS feed working using Commission Hack plugin but not to my satisfaction); http://www.train4cycling.com (focused on cycling training for endurance); http://www.cycle4health.com (focused on cycling for health without all that endurance stuff); http://howtodealwithtoddlertantrums.net (a new area in a microniche arena with a view to selling my own eBook); http://www.go4internetmarketingbusiness.com (this will become my main affiliate marketing site)
  • Trying to do too much myself.  I have always been a technology junkie and I have been keen to learn how things work. My preferred style is to understand something by doing first before I outsource. I am also kind of waiting to earn some income before I start incurring fixed cost. Have spent a lot of effort getting rid of fixed cost and it is slowly racking up with many of the Internet services requiring ongoing costs (e.g., autoresponder; domain registrations; hosting; webinar service; Twitter service; etc)
  • FX trading continues to prove a long and slow learning process. I am learning a lot about my own trading psychology. As a trader I am not good at seeing negative numbers - I tend then to pull trades off because I doubt the strategy and/or tighten stop losses too tight. I have not really pinned down what the trading problem is though I can cast some of the blame onto my first trading coach - she confused me on the choice of strategy - and one of my teachers who confused me about selectivity in choosing trades ("if it fits the rules of the strategy take all the trades" Other coaches introduced rules of excellence). Where I am now is I have full command of too many strategies and I have not yet found a consistent model that works for me (trading strategy; trading plan; trade management are all not firmly bedded down).  So I have invested time in two different directions. 1. Outsource the trading to some good traders who earn a percentage of profits and trade my account the same way they trade theirs - still on trial but they are doing better than I am. I will learn from their trading style too. 2. Continue working to refine the trading robots I have trained. With the exception of October which was a choppy month, the robot is trading profitably each month - still work to do as one robot is making fewer and smaller winning trades it should to overcome the losing ones. Just started testing a new one - picked one of the rated ones from Clickbank - Megadroid - will post views when I have them. Also acquired FAPTurbo in the 85% off anniversary sale - (only have to recover a much smaller price to breakeven). Also will look at Milion Dollar Pips - it's a scalping robot. I kind of like training machines to do my work. BUT is is also a break in FOCUS
  • Not sure this is a mistake but I have now taken over management of my own personal portfolio. This was a longer term plan and I have just completed a 6 month coaching programme with Trading Pursuits based here in Sydney. The mistake in there was not committing the time to get the best out of the learning - I did find the weekly webinars a bit repetitive. That is probably no surprise as the markets and the media have been singing the same old song all this time. Media says: CRISIS. Market says: MOVING UP - STEADY AS SHE GOES. One good thing is Trading Pursuits did organize an extra full day event at the end of the programme which served well to bring a bunch of things together. It's been a little longer to get my portfolio finally moved across from HSBC Global Asset Management - took just under 3 months to get that moved. I am sure pleased I did the portfolio tidy up early on and could hold on while the market drifted steadily upwards and could be safe with no interventions needed. I have continued with a mentorship process with Brad McFadden of The Daily Trading Report. So far that is working well with a weekly webinar and a scheduled weekly call. Get on well with Brad as he spent several years in South Africa and understands me and is not filled with the Aussie bloke thing (he's a Kiwi). So far the market moves that we have followed are shaping the right way - not all but it is positive. Once I have that shaped up, I can focus a little more on other things.  I have learned a huge amount and feel better equipped to build an investment portfolio that is wider than a "buy and hold" thing and it is leveraged to asymmetric wins and covers a wider range of instruments. It's pretty scary what I have learned in the last 6 to 9 months. And I now know how to make my portfolio grow when the market is going down.
  • Done next to no cycling - this is a sad indictment for a blog called Cycle Tourist. We have had a really cold winter and it has been hard to get motivated to get out to ride. I guess what is happening is that I have got so busy doing other things that I do not feel that going out for a ride is justifiable. That needs to change as I have committed to ride 2 legs of Cycle Around Australia 2013 (http://www.cycleacrossoz.com.au). Have been successful on getting the web presence built and ranked. If you Google Cycle Around Australia we are on page 1. What I really like about that is our main competitor is buying Google Ads to appear above us. Still got work to do to get Cycle Tours Australia to bring us to page 1. There is not a lot of pressure to do this as the ride is filling up quite well. There is a training ride scheduled for mid-January in the Victorian Alps - I have committed to ride that and must train as it includes one big climb over Mt Hotham. Looking forward to that ride - a few mates going and Lorraine is coming along too.
  • Have not seen enough of my children this half of the year. Easy to make excuses as I did travel a bit and they have been busy with university and final year at school. Truth is it hurts as it reminds me of what has gone in the past and it just reminds me of FAILURE.
  • Have spent some time on my South African venture
It's not all bad
  • Married life goes well
  • Markets are drifting up - better than down.
  • Health is good
  • Some of my actions are producing results. Look at @MarkSCarrington and @Go4Forexprofits on Twitter to see the followers
  • My world of friends around the world grows.
With luck I will become a little more regular in the blogoshpere. The plan is to hone in on two areas:
  1. Breathe Your Dreams - a blog about all the lifestyle things that work in my life - fitness; health; cooking; natural health
  2. Stratocharge your wealth - a blog about building your wealth through passive residual income business and investment approaches.
The broad idea is to talk about the things that I have tried and used and found to be successful. With a long track record of building a successful life I hope that there are lessons that will be of use to some of my readers