I like Mr Coben ‘s style. His books are page turners and you can’t put them down before you’ve known the end. Result- I usually start them at 10pm, keep reading until 1am then can’t sleep until I have finished it all- typically you can add two more hours of reading. This said I don’t like his Myron Bolivar’s stories and don’t bother buying them anymore. For the ones who speak French ( I believe he hasn’t been translated into English so far) and who will know what I talk about he gives me some reminiscence of another writer called Paul -Loup Sulitzer. And Sulitzer goes on my nerves easily – except for one of his books called ” Cartel”- his masterpiece in my humble opinion.
Anyway- back to Coben last novel. This one is about – once again- a guy who’s being caught up by his past, his lies and his personal tragedies. Nobody around him seems to be immune to the rules of ” we can’t be all black or white or good or bad”, which of course creates an entanglement of deceptions and redemption. Sadly Coben has a tendency to come back to one last twist- it is almost becoming a ritual- of threatening at the very last moment the hero’s last support. It is a tad annoying and not very original but in this last opus, it fits the bill perfectly. You see the long term practice – every detail has its importance- and you end up satisfied. The only thing that marvels me is that except for ” Tell no one” I don’t thin k any of his best sellers has been put on the big screen- but I am confident that this situation will soon be corrected.
Go, Coben, go!
The banking world as we know it is coming to an end…Isn’t it?
So the end of our economic world is near. UBS and the likes are publishing numbers that the common of mortals can’t even conceive – and it seems that the losses are far bigger than any past quarter benefits results we ever had in the past. 37 billion $ subprime losses for UBS now. Lehman brothers is asking for a raise of 4 billion $ to re capitalize. Societe Generale hasn’t been able to reach the amount it was looking for after the amazing exploit of its star trader Jerome Kerviel. And let’s not talk about the common people who not only end up with a galoping inflation at every level – food, energy and taxes for the ones living on another planet- but still have to pay mortgages that they were most of the time barely able to repay in the first place. Are we having fun here or is it just the beginning of the fun? Central banks are injecting billion in a system meant to become extinct anyway. London city house prices are falling as well as US ones or Spansih ones. Europe struggles with higher prices as well as China. The Fed might end up regulating the system but even a purge will not make the bad mortgages go away so easily. Recession is near say our officials, pulling desperately an alarm that has run out of battery. The markets in the meanwhile play the yo yo, playing hope on the darkest predictions and numbers and taking profits as soon as the sun shine. I hear traders being blamed for the end result. But the truth is that we all are. The cheap credit? Between the bank who liberally lended money to anyone without discrimanation to the same ones who thought that a third tv, holidays in Majorca and silicon breast were a necessity, who is more to blame? From central banks to Warren Buffet who used interest rates to boost an economy in need of a correction to the people in the street who are convinced that they deserve better because they never set a foot in Africa, who is more responsible? From an era of after war where it became a rule to have rights before duties, who’s guilty?
Now the cheap life has come to with a hidden hefty price tag as well as the ozone layer is in need of a patch. Tomorrow looks bleak indeed and no one really knows for sure where we ‘re going or- for that matter- how it is going to end. My wild guess is that we have to brace ourselves and be ready for sacrifice because despite our wonderful new technologies and abilities man has still desires of grandeur that can’t always be fulfill.
I predict that we may have a few more months of turbulences and maybe even of small victories in the markets, but as everybody should know ” la roche tarpeienne est proche du Capitole” . For the English speaking only, the higher the climb, the harder the fall.
Bugger.
Planet earth
Although this is not a movie but a serie of documentaries on animals and habitat of our lovely planet, these dvds definitely deserve a review. Their quality and their purpose is a must see for the whole family. I am not so much an animal person anymore. I used to love cats, dogs, guinea pigs, mice and hamsters when I was a child. I was desperate to have an animal – but except for a hamster, didn’t have much luck. The hamster lasted 2 years and I was quite upset when he died. I inheritated 3 gold fish when I was a teenager. two of them died jumping out of the aquarium – landing on my pillow and the last one had the position of a hanging man the very last time I saw him. I tried to save a pigeon who had a broken wing and had to bury him in a park nearby- a friend of my mother helped me. As soon as I lived on my own I got a cat. He was actually my boyfriend’s family cat. His parents had decided to move back to America and had the intention to have him put to sleep. I was horrified and I adopted him. He was white and yellow with angora hair – no pure race there. I loved him to bits and since he left, more than twenty years ago now, I kept adopting yellow cats. I am without one currently, as the last one died this year – he was run over by a car. But I miss having a cat – and it is in my plans to have another one by the spring.
This said, I find animals interesting and I enjoy watching monkeys at the zoo when I bring my kids along. I am terrified by lions and bears, or tigers, or any wild cats for that matter, but I appreciate that there are more than one living form on earth. Of course I have my doubts about this last statement when I look at my fellows human, but you know what I mean.
I knew naturally that animals in the wild are predators mostly and that it is not always pretty or fair. I had once watched a documentary on lions where the father waited for the mother to go hunting and just killed his own children that he ate with delight. One of my sons was with me at the time – he was 4. Neither him or me fully recovered after this- we both don’t like lions very much anymore. But I never really truly understood what it meant to live in the wild. The truth is simple- and it is ugly. At the same time, there is something magical and incredibly hopeful about the destiny of thousands of defferent species. Imagine: all they do is look for food and look for water. They have to travel for days or weeks to have a few days of abundance that will give them enough strength to carry on for the rest of the season(s). Their fight for survival is amazing. They follow path that no one who is slightly sane would follow but they still make it. They have to sleep and walk and eat in incredible condition. And they have no choice about it. It made me terribly sad to see the victims try to run and succumb anyway. It was fascinating to see that the first bite was all that it took to make them lose the game and accept their death without even a hint of struggle. It was scary to watch a polar bear lay down and die when food was just meters away – but he didn’t have the strength to get up for it. I am not even talking about the climate changes and the human imput to add to their misery. The whole thing is being film in the best possible conditions in images that make you dream. The earth is a beautiful place but life is hell.
So for all the commuters would get into trance as soon as they step on a bus/tube/train, for all the people who have the feeling that what they do doesn’t matter, for all the children who take Father Xmas ‘ toys for granted, for all of us who believe that we deserve more than we do….Watch this. Watch and learn.
Having it all…
In our society – western I mean- women are lucky. We have it all- most of us. We are allowed to go out even at night and choose our own clothes. We can even wear mini skirts and plunging necklines if we want to. we can put make up on without being asked how much we charge in the street. We can go and study for as long as we wish ( or we can). We can ask a man to marry us and we can ask for divorce. We have a roof above our head and we don’t have to live with our parents until we find a husband. We can raise our kids and get a job at the same time. We can decide if we prefer to live in a city or in the country. And when we retire we may have a pension. So far so good. I can see most of you nodding- yeah, right, so what?. So I’ve got you. If you haven’t noticed that you agreed from the beginning with a simple allegation ( ” We are allowed to go out…”) then it means that you know something that most of us women already know. We are second class citizen. Even in our nice western world. And let’s not talk about the salry’s discrepancies.
Ouch now, am I a bloody feminist? Not sure but I can tell you this: I was naive enough to believe all this crap. I thought that we were lucky because we could have it all. I have been travelling to India, to Asia, to South America and in a few other parts of the world. I was so happy to have been born in Europe because I could see that I was free, compare to these poor souls, I was even more free than the men. But I was then young and I didn’t know that there is a price for having it all. Because it literally really means that. When you are a woman and you are as lucky as I am, you still end up doing more chores in the house then a men. I can see men frown, but except for the odd one who lives alone with his child(ren), I would like to see one guy tell me where his daughter socks or gloves are – before checking. I would like him to tell me how much flour is left in the kitchen. I would like him to tell me when was the last time the sheets were changed. I would like him to tell me when was the last time he dusted the house or cleaned the toilets.
Ok, your wife might be ” just” a housewife who stays at home and look after the kids. You are the breadwinner and you deserve some rest. Granted. Now, tell me, how many hours is your wife working per day? and if you think that looking after the kids is jsut pleasure, go and find out how much a nanny is paid. And tell me the truth- how many people would actually prefer reading a book or go to a movie or go shopping or read a book instead of looking after the kids 24 on 24?
Now I have it all. I am not sure that I am so much a feminist but I know that in order to have it all, you have to find a man who is as naive as I am and believes that women have the same rights as men. So I got one – the unique specimen?- and although I still have to show him the socks on the floor and that doing the dishes doesn’t mean putting it next to the sink, I know that we are sharing this world and that I have his support in all my endeavours.
But boy, that’s hard work. And for the men reading this, for the sake of fairness, yes I still ask ny husband to open the jars for me and to get the bins out. Told you I had it all.
the right way of trading
I have been lately caught up by my impulsive trading. Most traders know what I mean when I talk of taking your profits too early or getting out of a trade too late. The fact that I am spreadbetting is of course not helping as I have the cost of the spread to take into account. I have also moved from Esignal to Tradestation ( these are the platform most used by individual traders around the world). As I am not a computer wizard- alas- it takes me quite a lot of time to get used to my new tools. I also discovered that despite the fact that I am a woman, I am not good at multi tasking while trading. I need to focus on my screens only and not let anybody break this state of pure concentration. I don’t even start to think of failure, what I have to do, if the new indicator is worth it- I just check my parameters and look for anything that might stop my trade in its tracks. I heard someone comparing trading to hunting today – there is alot of waiting, stalking the charts and then going for the execution. The image is quite right.
There are several stages in trading. The first one is when you discover that if you don’t study and learn to analyze a market, you will never make money in it. Although it seems to be common sense, one would be surprised to find out how many traders don’t bother to go through this process. They are not shy about asking questions though, but expect what they think are more qualified traders to answer them. I don’t mind sharing what I know, but I am getting increasingly fed up to have people asking me about a problem they have and when I give them what I think is the appropriate answer ( such as : ” Have you tried to read this book?”- hey, I am not going to do all the work for them, but I’ll be glad to spare them the research), I am being told: ” Oh, yeah, this book…I actually read that one, which is more recent from the same author, so I guess it covers it all anyway…”. Yeah, right. We all know that writers keep writing the same book over and over again. One could wonder how they sell another one once they have written the first one. Really. I am not talking about the fact that when they take the book, they read it in one hour ( they basically read the title of the chapters) and then they wonder why they haven’t learned anything. The list of all the sins one can commit can be very long. The truth is that most good traders did their research themselves. They may have had a lead, someone who introduced them to the market and showed them how it work, someone who was an example, but sooner or later, they had to make their own decisions and discover what worked for them. In short, they did what it took to get there.
Once the analysis, even basic, has become ingrained, there is the next stage. It is exciting, but if one has its head on its shoulders, it is also scary; you play with your money ( or most of us do). It means that losing can cost you dear. If the analysis is one thing, the mastering of the trade is another. It is not enough to have an idea of the strategy one can adopt, it is time now to fix rules about entries, exits, stoplosses and all the reason for which a trade is going to be taken – or not. The lessons are usually costly. And there are two different things going on here; one is all technical- you have to fix the limits of your theories. What are the points you can or can’t ignore, what invalidates your strategy or your trade, what can stop the trade, what can actually change the trend and so on. The other thing is emotional. You never really know how you are going to feel when the trade is on. The emotions can be quite strong – and sometimes contradictory. You can from joy to panic within seconds, from calm to nervous, from anxiety to relief. Most men I know prefer to have an automatized system in order to avoid these feelings. I don’t know many women in the job, but they seem to prefer being in control personnally. It doesn’t really matter what you prefer as long as you do it. But this is what happens to a lot of us. I am quite trustful that it actually happened to all of us traders – and probably more than once. You look at your screen, you see your trade happening and you don’t take it. You keep staring at the screen and you feel hopeless while you watch the trade going even further that what you would have expected it to do. Now the issue is that this is one more step forward ( congratulation, you know how to spot a good trade), but also a step back ( it is called ” analysis paralysis” and all sort of other names and is the equivalent of the white page for a writer). And it is also the moment of truth. This stage can last a bit. But if you can’t shake it, then it is game over for you because you will slowly but surely loose faith in yourself. And what a trader needs most is confidence in his abilities.
The last step is the Holy Grail. Some have it mistaken for a magical strategy that would give infallible results – and snowballing benefits and gains. But the Holy Grail of trading is much more simple. It has to do with consistency. It is about learning what suits you – the market that works for you, the indicators you know like the palm of your hand, the strategy you’re most comfortable with-, learning how to build the right state that allows you to trade with your full capacity, learning how to manage your winnings and your losses and making money on a regular basis. Then, when you have reach this goal, and you are able to repeat it ( almost) every day, you know that you are there. Now you only have to do it again and again- and keep it going.
You think it is that easy? well you are wrong. A trader’s job is never done. Cycles appear, things change, people psychology gets in the way and the news are where the wind blows. Let’s not talk about new tools, new indiactors, new strategies. But the bottom line is that traders are people who end up learning the greatest lesson of all: their ego should be left at the door. The only way to be right is to be able to follow the trend and if possible, anticipate it. So there isn’t really a right or wrong- there are just the facts. Traders have to keep an open mind at all time.
I know one thing. Great traders do. The others….They keep not opening the book.
“The book of the five rings” by Miyamoto Musashi
Mu husband offered me this book. There is a wide spread belief that traders and warriors ( or samurais or martial arts experts) have something in common. I received last year as a Xmas present some dvds ( by Clifford Bennett I think – not sure) where he displayed his skills to show how much discipline and self control are neccessary ( by actually cutting a fruit on his son’s throat with an extremely sharp Samurai sword). The aim was to show that fear has to be conquered, that practice was paramount and that execution had to be precise and flawless. I was not impressed. I still don’t understand why you should risk cutting your son’s throat to show how tough you are. At the end of the day, he would be the one who’d pay the price. Where is the metaphor for the trader’s responsability in all this?
Anyway, back to The five Rings. Written in 1643 it is still in use today for its potent metaphors. I enjoyed certain passages, such as: “The large scale is easy to see; the small scale is hard to see. To be specific, it is impossible to reverse the direction of a large group of people all at once, while the small scale is hard to know because in the case of an individual there is just one will involved and changes can be made quickly. This should be given careful consideration.” Anyone who has been against the trend knows what this means. Also any trader who’s misinterpreted a big market mover’s move gets it. Or : ” ” If you do not pursue a genuine path to its consummation, then a little bit of crookedness in the mind will later turn into a major warp.” Stick to the strategy? Rings a bell?
The main rules are the following:
1.Think of what is right and true.
2. Practice and cultivate the science.
3. Become acquainted with the arts.
4. Know the principles of the crafts.
5. Understand the harm and benefits in everything.
6. Learn to see everything accurately.
7. Become aware of what is not obvious.
8. Be careful even in small matters.
9. Do not do anything useless.
Isn’t this just a perfect way to display the cardinal rules in trading? any points forgotten and you’re dead meat. A last one for the road: ” ” If you think of catching, think of hitting, think of blocking, think of tying up, ot think of obstructing, you will thereby become unable to make the kill. It is crucial to think of everything as an opportunity to kill.” Do you remember Nike’s motto : ” Just do it” ? Now you can add the final touch, the one that has been written more than 350 years ago: focus.
Now, if you were to read this book and is able to explain – making sense- how to apply ” The body of the short-armed monkey” or ” The sticky body” to something else than street combat, please let me know, I shall be interested.
I have high hopes that somebody will buy me as a Xmas present ” the art of War”, if possible in French. I promise to make the review of it…
“Autobiography” by Agatha Christie
I have no shame whatsoever to reveal that I am a fan of Agatha Christie. I read almost all of her books ( there are more than 80 of them) – and I actually did this twice ( the first time when I was 11 and the second when I was 29. I am planning to re read the entire collection as soon as I can find the books in my still packed boxes).
Mrs Christie was a phenomenon. Her autobiography – that was written in 15 years , from the 50’s to the mid 60’s- tell us of her memories from the beginning until she reached middle age. Optimistic, full of good sense and practical advice, very detailed about the ways of two extincted eras ( the pre-1 st war and the second), the book is an easy read and although it has almost a thousand pages, you end up wishing she had written more. A life was not so extraordinary – or so she wants you to believe.
I realized that she must have been a master in disguising aher true feelings. She obviously believed in discretion and good manners and was by no means a kiss and tell sort of person- or at least not outside her intimate entourage. The book tells you nothing of her much publicized vanishing in 1926 and the only reference she made about it in her book was to say how the media could be hurtful when they smell a scandal. Silence is also made upon the infidelities of her second husband although she stretches at the end of her confessions that she has reached a stage in life where the things of the heart are behind her and the little pleasures of life sufficient to her happiness. How much of this is true, I don’t know. I just hope that I am right not to feel too sorry for her.
If you are curious about the habits and customs of the early 20th century I do recommend reading it. Life seems to have been peaceful then and quite easy. I strongly suspect that it is not reflecting the reality but it is quite interesting to read.
“Death at a funeral”
The title of this movie made me think that someone was trying to be subtle here – but it was bit obvious to me. Nevertheless I decided to drag my poor husband to go and see it ( I was not tempted by ” Beowulf” or ” The Dark is rising”…). I had a few doubts though as I had read that the plot was about a funeral among stiff uper class society turned funny because an unknown dwarf turns up and declares that he is the deceased’s lover. You couldn’t hope for something worse.
So I was extremely surprised to be taken from the beginning. The actors were playing stereotypes to start with but once we had establish what we had ( the lawyer, the doctor, the vicar, the two sons who have issues and so on ( I am not telling it all as I wouldn’t like to spoil the surprise), the whole thing took off. And the worst it got the funnier it was. The characters suddenly were not all that they seemed and we even ended up finding them less pathetic- if not sympathetic. The dwarf is actaully almost anecdotal although of course he is the catalyst for most of the action.
This is definitely English comedy at its best. discreet, displaying vulgarity only when necessary and happily excentric.
If you have liked ” Four weddings and a funeral” but would happily skip the soppy romance part, this is for you. Men can survive during this one without feeling that their brain has been half amputated.
“Ratatouille”
Ok, I am supposed to say that I went to see this one because of the kids. truth is – since I saw the trailer I wanted to see it. The rat did look cute and the quality of the background of the picture looked technically appealing. My sons had all seen it while they were in Switzerland last summer but they were game to go back to see it again, so when it came out here – in the UK- I took all my children and we really enjoyed it.
The Pixar company is good; they make clever movies that adults can watch without being bored and kids have fun too. The messages are slightly more complex than the ones from Disney and the heroes, whoever they are, have good and bad sides. Their choices are not always easy and their stories are not simple. I like that. Things are rarely easy in life and I believe that a kid movie can convey the message without being desperate.
So the quality of the picture is amazing. The details are fantastic and you come out of there being ready to be more adventurous in the kitchen. The plot is of course about someone who is not at the right place but it turns out to be at the right time. Does it end well? Of course, although it is not too ambitious.
A must see. And a buy when it comes out in dvd.
But the toys are crap.
To all the people who read my blog….
The last few weeks I have received a few messages from the people who read my blog. Most of them are friends and family but a few of them are strangers. From the last category I have received skype messages but it turned out that the messages were delayed and I couldn’t answer back due to their privacy settings.
So this for all the people who read my blog:
Thank you. Thank you for the support, for the time you give me, for the attention and sometimes the criticism. I have come to realize that I have an audience – small but faithful – and I am touched. I also hope that I keep entertaining you and that you don’t take me seriously. I will also make the effort to update my entries more often.
Have a good time- and if possible, a good life.
Sacha Jenkyn 