Warren's Tribute

Today I write in tribute to the prestigious Warren Buffett. As I've posted previously on Imboogled, his advice on never selling out on failing stocks (in the certain knowledge that you haven't lost money until you've sold), has guided my investment strategy. Especially when it comes to the late Bradford & Bingley.

Oh... haven't you heard Mr Buffet? B&B have "moved on". The entire hardly-worth-noting value of my investment, after dropping by 80% has now completely dissapeared. Halifax announced the following through corporate notification today:

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that by order under the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008 Bradford & Bingley's UK and Isle of Man retail deposit business, along with its branch network, has been transferred to the Banco Santander Group. The remainder of Bradford & Bingley's business will be taken into public ownership.

The Treasury has stated that following recent turbulence in global financial markets, Bradford & Bingley has found itself under increasing pressure as investors and lenders lost confidence in its ability to carry on as an independent institution. The FSA determined on Saturday morning that the firm no longer met its threshold conditions for operating as a deposit taker under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and FSA rules.

The Treasury with the other Tripartite Authorities, acting in their respective capacities, sought a range of private sector solutions before taking this action. However, with its financial advisor, HM Treasury concluded that this option best delivered its objectives of maintaining financial stability, protecting consumers and protecting taxpayers. Subsequently, the listing of Bradford & Bingley's shares has been suspended pending clarification with effect from 7.30am on 29th September 2008.

The Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008 also provides for a compensation order to be made. This order, relating to compensation for shareholders and others whose rights may have been affected by the transfer into public ownership, will be laid in due course.

Oh I see... in due course. I fully expect (as do most analysts) to be compensated at the closing price or lower. My beef here is this; why do world governements feel they have the right to intefere with the auonamous system of the global markets?

If this had happened outside of this so called, "global meltdown", B&B would have been allowed to dip lower and lower, and would have been bought out by a company as a package deal (and not merciously carved up as some sort of Spanish cum nationalised entity). The shareprice would have recovered somewhat and shareholders like myself could have continued as normal.

I would have thought that the governemtent would have learned from the Northern Rock scandal and thought very carefully before jumping in with Banco Santander. I also happen to love the delivery method... via a closed weekend market, leaking information slowly like a toxic barge floating down the river.

The only solace I can take from this is that the whole saga is finally over. So many times have I wished that I could close the book on B&B... I guess I should have been careful what I wished for.

The FAA

I seem to spend most of my time these days thinking about food. I heard a while back about a group called Food Addicts Anonymous; and I have to confess, I think they are really on to something there. Their charter reads:

"This twelve step fellowship views food addiction as a biochemical disease".

Food was always a central part of my life, I used it to control stress and to facilitate social situations, and whilst fulfilling those needs, it somewhere along the line became an addition. Regardless of social surrounding or stress levels, the same constant high level of consumption was required. Sound familiar? I could have easily been talking about alcohol or non prescription drugs.

When I decide to do something, that something is done 100%, without fail. Some people refer to this as an "all or nothing" personality type. It has its advantages, in as much as the all can facilitate greatness in whatever the person decides to do, but it can also facilitate unexpected results and dangerous obsessional behavior.

For me, loosing a huge amount of body weight over the past couple of years has been a pretty gratifying road. I'll admit that this might sound a little strange, so let me qualify that; its given me focus in that I've been able to enjoy measurable results. I've also had a constant stream of positive feedback to thrive on. Now I guess comes the hard part; I've reached ideal weight and just can't stop.

Even though I'm working out 2-4 times weekly, I'm still not gaining weight, which as far as my trainer is concerned (and most knowledgeable people I've talked to) is less than ideal. I've slowly been slipping more and more into the danger zone. My last body fat count reached somewhere near 12%, when I should be looking for 15% at my age and workout ratio.

So where have I gone wrong? I guess not adjusting my intake has been one of the major problems. I run on about 30-40% of my RDI for fat and until I recently started eating fish again (I had previously been completely vegetarian for two years) my protein levels had also been way below the RDIs, especially for someone on a regular workout schedule.

Why then am I unable to let this obsession go? Why even though I've reached my goal (indeed over and above my goal), do I still feel the need to harbor this compulsion? I guess it has to be food addiction, or some form thereof.

Its very different for someone addicted to drugs or alcohol I do believe, simply in the way that the offending substance can over time, be eliminated completely. One can become free from drink for x years and over time (although I appreciate that this can literally be years), that need is reduced substantially, perhaps on occasion eliminated completely.

This is different for food addicts, because hey have to eat. There is simply no getting away from it; its a little like an alcoholic having to consume half a beer a day for the rest of his life but no more.

Regardless, I spend all of my time thinking about food, and I guess the above contributes to this. I very rarely feel full, and even when I do, I am already considering the next meal... in fact even as I'm eating, I'm planning the next meal.

The bottom line is this; even though I've now reached what many would consider to be normal weight, I spend vast amounts of my time planning my meals, making up for over eating by working out, or feeling guilty about eating. I want to know when its going to stop. When am I going to be able to stop thinking about food and start concentrating on some of life's other consuming areas of thought... like world peace.

I appreciate that this post is a little random, but I sometimes feel a need to communicate this all-consuming condition outward. Thank goodness for blogs!

Not So Portable

The next for me living that paperfree lifestyle I've been chasing for a couple of years now is being able to publish the PDFs I scan online (right now I only store offline local copies).

That way, not only can I access them from anywhere in the world, but I can also allow certain people to access certain files that they may require. An example here would be allowing my investment advisor access to my investment account statements etc.

The additional benefits to going online would be searchability (see below), but also the added bonus of knowing that my data is safe against loss (as the majority of mainstream providers have a wide variety of redundancies in place).

I only have three requirements here:

1) The files need to be ultra secure. We are talking about my entire life, so serious encryption has to be used in order to ensure the integrity of my data.

2) The files need to be searchable by metadata. Metadata is not document content, it is information about that content. At a simple level, metadata literally means data about data. So a title, author, date written would all be classed as metadata. In the context of PDF files, being searchable by metadata means that I can search by document title, author, creation date... or even text contained in the document.

3) The solution must include a viewer. Simply storing the PDF files is not enough, a flash viewer (ideally) should be available to browse and search the archive.

Most providers meet the third qualification, however surprisingly the first two seem to be harder to come by. It would be great if Google Docs met these qualifiers, however it only currently meets the third. It lacks a secure interface and also does not currently allow for PDF metadata searching. There are other providers, some even meeting the second qualifier, however the first seems to be all elusive.

I wonder if I could set up my own solution. That way at least I could control the security. If anyone has any thoughts on this, fire away! Paul has some interesting thoughts on Google Docs PDF support, detailing some of the limitations and frustrations he's experienced.

B&B Days

In the financial world, you have your good days, your not so good days, and your Bradford & Bingley days. Right now, B&B is trading at 37.25. To remind you here, I bought at 112.92. As of late, I've been having more B&B days than I've been having good days.

On the good days scale, I recently managed to cancel one of my forex trades, which I really think was an achievement. I had made the decision to move funds I held in USD back to GBP as I believe that the pound is nearly as low as it can go versus the dollar... or that the dollar has some recessing to do for itself which will even out the rate... either way I foresaw the bottom of the tank being reached and decided that I should protect my US assets and move them to a more secure currency.

The thinking was pretty sound... but as with most of my recent judgements, I seem to have missed the bottom of the tank when I traded at around 1.845. A couple of hours later, the rate had fallen to 1.817. This might not seem like a lot, but on every pound, the difference can add up.

To give you an example, if I was transfering just $1000, I would be looking at a return of 542GBP with the first rate and 550GBPish with the latter. So an average of 8GBP per $1000. Pretty substantial when added over thousands.

After I placed the trade, there was a confirmation issue with one of my EFT accounts. I used this as the grounds on which to cancel my trade... saying that I needed a more immediate trade and had used another broker. As you can imagine this did not go down well with the broker and after a few "binding contact" conversations involving me grovelling pretty heavily; they canceled the trade. This was a pretty good result. I guess when you are being hit with 67% losses on investments like B&B... small results like this seem sweeter somehow.