22:49 NZT Sat 4th

Weighed in, weighed in.  The fifth and final ODI is in the books.  Frustratingly the West Indies scraped home and won with two balls and three wickets in hand.  I got a half-decent price about NZ on the toss, although key slow bowler Daniel Vettori was being rested.  

I can’t be arsed to explain what happened but it was another frustrating small loss, bringing the tour to a sour, small-medium loss in total.

Tomorrow I have to check out by 11 am and have eleven hours to fill until NZ018 tries to make it back across the Pacific.  Seems unlikely.  I plan to swim and exercise my nuts off in Centennial for at least four hours and maybe sunbathe.

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I feel very trapped by the job at the moment.  People are envious of me and with good reason.  Non-industry people marvel that I can get paid for watching cricket and punting on it.  Industry cognoscenti know who I work for and what a privilege that is.

I don’t think I’m any good at this job.  I can guess at percentages blind and normally come up with a pip or two of the market.  Woop-de-fucking…  Proof positive that I can think like everyone else.  I eked out crumbs of value and then shat it all away in an unreasoned and unlucky trade in the third game.

Fundamentally this is a five year position.  There aren’t old traders and you don’t make partner.  No-one retires with a long service clock.  The very best go off and make fortunes on their own bat, the good make a living and there are lots and lots of thirty- and forty-somethings on the scrapheap.

You are also at the mercy of events which are beyond your control a great deal.  The long run is supposed to take care of the variance but with cricket having so few games means that you take much longer to get there.

Beyond which you trade in markets and you don’t control the character of those markets.  Theory would suggest that they become more efficient and harder to beat as they become more liquid.  Alternatively they could dry up.  With the commission charged by the websites and the bookies’ percentages taking money out of circulation you need a pool of losers pumping money in.  These are zero-sum games  and for there to be a winner there must be a loser.  Darwinian selection is at work – the strong prosper and the weak get eaten.  What if the weak find something they like more than being eaten or someone drains the lagoon?  You have hungry sharks flapping their gills on the dry sandbanks, gasping for air.

I haven’t shown good results over the last two months.  I don’t have confidence in my abilities or methodology at the moment.  I can muddle through this using bluff and guesswork for a couple of years maybe, hoping for a little luck.  It’s not a basis for the rest of my life though.

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And another thing.  One for the oxymoron list.  “Here’s another X-List Classic from Ocean Colour Scene.”  It made me wince.