Chapter 20 - Diary of a trader

GUG, as he was known to the family, lived a long, happy and apparently blameless life. We all thought the most out-of-character thing he ever did was the sponsored sky-dive on his 78th birthday. But it turns out that wasn’t the case at all.

By day, GUG was a mild-mannered quantity surveyor. Or at least that’s what he did until he retired. After which, he kept himself busy – as they say – for the better part of three decades. But no-one knew exactly how industrious he had been until after he died, just before Christmas last year.

GUG, it turned out, had been keeping himself extraordinarily busy. Not with Sudoku puzzles... or tea dances... or even gardening. No! At the age of 91, GUG had been putting in eight hour days on the computer, managing his enormous portfolio of shares and other investments.

It turned out that GUG was a whole lot richer than anyone could ever have imagined. Think seven figures. And then think again if you imagined the first figure was a 1. And while he certainly never lived a life of poverty, GUG never gave the impression of wealth, either.

GUG was clearly a saver, rather than a spender. For sure, he helped me out once or twice when I was at Uni, which was generous. In time, I was able to repay those favours. And in retrospect, how GUG must have chuckled when I gave him M&S vouchers on his birthday. Firstly, because I made a big deal about wanting to treat him to some posh nosh. And then again because of the shedloads of M&S shares he had accumulated over the years.

Anyway. I got this phone call. Just like in the movies. GUG’s lawyer, asking if he could come and visit me. The fact it was this way round, rather than a summons to his office, filled me with foreboding. I’d always thought the student hand-outs were gifts. Was I supposed to pay them back into his estate, or what? It was bad enough that GUG had gone. Now this...

The lawyer looked a bit like Jeffrey Archer. He worse a sharp suit and a pair of Himmler spectacles. I fussed around making coffee and polite conversation. The weather. Tottenham’s chances of finishing above the Gooners. Gordon Brown’s chances of succeeding Tony Blair. But eventually, it was time for business, and in the finest of traditions, I was invited to take a seat.

And that was when I discovered all about GUG’s secret life. It turned out Jeffrey Archer knew him really well. They’d met through an investment club somewhere out near Monmouth. GUG, apparently had an entirely different nickname amongst his fellow-investors: Midas.

I expect by now, you think you know where this story is going. That GUG left me his entire fortune. That yours truly has scooped that jackpot and is now a millionairess. Well, yes, and no. I have been given an astonishingly generous legacy.... but it’s more like three oranges appearing in a straight line on the fruit machine, as opposed to three heavy sacks of cash.

Among other things I learned that afternoon was that GUG had followed my adventures with Finspreads with keen interest. Never missed a chapter. And that I am also a source of amusement to the Monmouth Investors Club. (Hello Monmouth!)

GUG admired:

• My tenacity: “You never seem to know when you’re beaten!” as Jeffrey Archer put it.”
• My honesty: “Maybe it’s a gender thing, that women their mistakes more easily than men do?”
• My willingness to put my money on the line: “Gareth liked the fact that you never moaned about your losses.”

But that’s more than enough about me. The truth is, as you know, is that I had decided trading is not for me. I said as much to Jeffrey Archer.

“But you’ve put in all this work!” he responded. “Most of the successful traders I know go through a learning curve. True, you’ve lost money. But you’re aware of the mistakes you’ve made. So it would be a shame to give up now. And besides, Gareth was very keen that you should continue.”

So now let me tell you what GUG has done. Over and above a generous legacy, I was offered an additional £20,000. But there were strings. If I accepted the extra cash, I was to pay it into my Finspreads account and use it – as he put it – to continue my trading education.

What would you have done?

I asked what would happen to the £20k if I declined. Could I give the lot to charity? Or bet the lot on Arsenal to lose in the Champions League final? Or even stick it in some unit trusts. No! No! And Definitely Not! Finspreads or nothing. Except that GUG would have been extremely disappointed if I failed to rise to the challenge, and the money would disappear into the residue of the estate.

No emotional blackmail there, then.

And so it came to pass a few weeks ago that my Finspreads balance took a mighty leap upwards. I sat staring at the Account Summary bit of my trading screen, wondering what to do next.

It was extremely weird, the impact of this legacy. I was still trading within my own rules: This is money I CAN afford to lose, although naturally, I am keen to make it grow. But I somehow felt I should be more responsible in my trades.

And as if that wasn’t weird enough, something even stranger happened next. I started trading with GUG’s money and I started winning. Every one of my next nineteen trades was a winner. Suddenly I was invincible. I had won a total of £1,259.28.

Most of this came from the zigging and zagging of the FTSE. I’d realised that while it never went much over 6100, it never fell much under 5970. So if I bought after a steep fall – anything over 50 points in a session was enough to make me smile broadly – and then sold once it was heading up again, I couldn’t go wrong.

I was still being cautious with my stakes: mostly £1 trades, and then I’d buy some more when I was in profit. My best profit was on the FTSE May contract - £136 for a £2 trade – and my most modest win added an extra £25 to the pot. My 12 FTSE trades returned an average of £62 each,

I also accumulated £168.19 on two winning NIFTY (Indian index) trades, £191.50 when the Warsaw Index started going up, and £141.50 on a couple of gold trades.

All well and good and gold. But then... as I am sure you are only too well aware, the markets began to take a tumble. What did I do? I’ll tell you in the next chapter!

Sally Nicoll is a writer and a Finspreads customer whose career to date has embraced journalism, broadcasting, and advertising copywriting She lives in London and is currently writing her second novel. Feel free to contact her at veryluckymoney@hotmail.com.
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