Ive been based in London for the past 3 months, and still have a few months left... Made me realize Im getting old... And indeed dying...
Not of anything in particular, but the reality of aging is in the mirror. Thank God Im not blind to that.
Not that my stay here has been depressing, or anything, but stop reading if you think this is going in that direction :-)
My timing here is interesting: Ive been sent to basically gain insight on markets in a semi-internship type job... and what Im seeing is interesting.
Ive seen the "Occupy London" protest go from an organized mess, to rank and file tents... Ive talked to commodity traders who had no business in physical commodities work in cross-asset arbitrage models... Ive talked to a former producer-trader whose hedging strategy included "rebalancing"...
The protests are there for a reason... And whether I liked it or not.... I learnt the "big money" trade, where the "strong hands" set fire to my industry.
Im a simple kind of guy, supply and demand is pretty easy to grasp... And in the world of speculating, you don't have to want oil/metals/food... You don't even have to take delivery of it...
But you do need to make money.
I was made out a fool by a trader who took my search for a physical consumer as revenue loss. The arbitrage is king in the world of models, and 3 month spreads.
The sad part is that he was right... To a point.
Eurozone crisis anyone?