Wednesday, 18 February 2009

1056 April Fool of a Day

It is the first day of April, Fools day of the year, although I tend to celebrate this feature of my personality more frequently. One MySpace friend off was from someone wanting to make me richer through money. The individual had clearly not read any of my writings or the main purpose of my space on My Space. I would not mind being financially richer but only in terms of being able to do better at what I do now, having greater flexibility and be able to indulge the odd impulse without calculating what else will have to be given up, or placed further down on the 'to do when I have the cash' list. I do not make a "if I had the cash" list.

I play the Euro lottery and as with the national lottery, I do have a return, somewhere between thirty to forty percent of the investment since inception, consoling that a proportion of the difference goes to good causes. I once had a crazy period investing in penny shares on the stock market increasing £1000 to £7000 within a period of three months, mainly in small gains of £100, through buying and selling within trading periods, and three mind boggling gains of doubling the investment within a couple of hours of trading. Of course I bought higher and sold lower than others, but having a 24 hour a day occupation instinct and natural caution led me to just marvel at the experience and speculate what it would be like to have ten or a hundred times the amount to invest, and the full trading day to evaluate what was happening, instead of checking the market before setting off for the office, checking positions over lunch and then reassessing in the evening and placing sales and orders overnight. Then disaster struck on my one day of the year at a Test match in London when I wondered why a lot of young men in suits were using their cell phones instead of paying attention to what was going on the field of play. Because my investments were all in froth, I not only lost all the gains, but had to borrow to meet the rapidly mounting deficits, Fortunately the government was selling its energy, telecommunications and other holdings which enabled extended family bids and significant capital gains over short periods with the consequence of an accumulated investment of £100000 was turned into £103000. I would have done better with conventional investment plus the government share sales but would I have had so much fun and sleepless nights?

If I win the Euro lottery of several million I would be able to pay others to invest and manage the funds for me. But how much do you need to win in order meet the cost of accountants, lawyers, investment managers, security officers, personal assistants and drivers? £20 million would be about right, producing a net safe weekly income over £10000. However how much would be available for me to spend over what I spend now and how much of the day would be taken up with the selection and management of agents and direct staff?

And what of the impact of publicity? Earlier I watched snippets of what happened to Gareth Gates, the first British Idols' runner up, while visiting my mother. I had seen the programme in full and the aspect which struck me again was his difficulty coping with having a camera on him when going to the shops, after being several years out of the limelight.

With significant wealth, if it comes suddenly, does one gain or lose control over the use of time?

I will continue to buy a ticket, especially having won £7.40 for a £4.50 investment on my birthday, but in reality I will settle for trying to find 101 people to this writing and who will representing all ages, interest and nations. One new friend has managed to list all her brilliant writings on the profile pages and explained how this is done. I am still trying to do the same.

Another has just sold a painting for $1 million and has anyone heard of Tori Haynes? It has been that kind of a day and what would I do for some chocolate?

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