Yep, I'm well aware that this post is a little overdue, and I make my apologies. You would think with the extra hours I have been having I would have more time to update everyone, so my apologies, but I must say it was nice to hear from people asking me to post again. It was nice to know that I don’t go totally unnoticed.

Oh, what's that? Extra Hours? Excuse me?

OK, a quick 411 on the last couple of weeks. Since leaving my job as a well paid engineer at a decent little engineering company to pursue my insane an unfounded dream of multiple AIS (Automated Income Streams) I have made a number of changes to my life. Pretty drastic changes really:

1. Working from home trying to develop AIS.
2. Trialling Polyphasic sleeping (Uberman Schedule).
3. Pretty much kicked the caffeine habit.
4. Shelved my physical training.
5. Gone slightly loopy.

OK, so number 1. I now live and die by my laptop and my desk. I spend 17 to 20 hours a day at my laptop hacking away with new ideas, tweaks on existing sites, emailing etc etc, desperately trying to get a good AIS or two. What's an AIS? An Automated Income Stream (A la Burt's Blog is a means by which you have an automated or managed business (or website most often) that generates money whether or not you are putting hours into it. Studying the ideas and practices that are now being talked about all over the net has changed my view on how to go about life. The focus of my life for the duration of the Ferrari challenge is now about developing AIS in order to get a sort of "compound interest" effect on my earnings.

2. Polyphasic sleeping. OK, this is a huge topic, but the short story? Try living in a way that means you only require 2 or 3 hours sleep every 24 hours. Sounds too good to be true? I'm living it right now (well not perfectly, more about that later). If you're interested, I will be posting more on it soon, but the idea was brought to me by all time Self Development Guru Steve Pavlina(that link should tell you more than I possibly can about Polyphasic Sleeping.

3. Kicking the caffeine. Yep, I can now officially go 24 hours without a coffee without getting a RAGING headache. As part of the Polyphasic Sleeping, I had to kick the coffee addiction, so now I just have one when I really want one, I don't use it as a stimulant just to get me though the day. I though this time would never come.

4. As part of adapting to the new sleeping regime, I found it very difficult to go to the gym and regulate my sleep habits, so I have shelved it for the 3 week adaptation period.

5. Gone slightly loopy... but then would anyone be able to tell the difference? I guess it's a mix of loneliness (working from home) Pressure (I have no income!) and overworking (I do nothing else except maybe see the handbrake (girlfriend for all you not familiar with that terminology).

OK, I’m psyched, but I know I shouldn’t be. Last Wednesday I lost £22.23 and I couldn’t be happier. Strange but true.

I truly believe that it is part of this psychological makeup that will give me an excellent chance of breaking out of the rat race in the near future. So why, if I am so intent on making money should I be celebrating that I just lost £22.23? Well I did it on the stock market.

OK, first up my disclaimer goes up. I fully realise any money you invest in stocks/shares can go down as well as up, but then the point of this exercise was not to make money. You see, one of my aims for this year was “to buy and sell shares on the stock market”, and this is exactly what I did.

It started Tuesday (Jul18th) when I opened up an InvestDirect account with HSBC, who amazingly (given my current financial situation) afforded me a 10,000GBP investment account. So yesterday, I started setting up my “fantasy portfolio”. It was vaguely interesting, but didn’t give me the bite that I needed. In the famous words of one of the Entrepreneurial fathers of our time, “Screw it, let’s do it” I thought. I looked through the day’s risers (it was about 10am) and recognised Carphone Warehouse (CPW). I felt I may have missed the boat with them (since they released their “Free Broadband” offer that really shook the market up) but wondered whether enough time had passed for the prick in prices to settle and investor faith to be restored. In all fairness though, no matter what though process I hide behind, I didn’t have a bloody clue what I was doing.

“Let’s see how to buy a share” was my next thought. I followed the screens in my portfolio control panel and, narrowly missing accidentally putting 2000GBP into shares, I went for about a tenner’s worth. All went through, and I magically owned 4 shares in Carphone Warehouse! WOW! They opened at 263p and I bought in at 268 which I hoped was a reasonable price.

I followed the price all day and low and behold, it steadily rose throughout until at about 4pm, I had a choice. I had achieved half of my dream so far that day, now I had the option of selling and MAKING MONEY! I did, naturally, realise that with the transactional costs factored in, I would walk away at a loss, but that wasn’t the point. I had the chance now of selling my shares and making money!

I looked at the price and the way in which it was rising and figured that it might just tip 285 before market closure (4:30pm). I put in an instruction to sell if it hit 285. To my amazement (I was feeling pretty cocky by now) the prices tipped 285 shortly before tailing off and closing at 283. The price plummeted the next day.

So here I am. OK, so I lost £11.35 (don’t ask me why I didn’t get charged the full transaction costs – maybe they felt sorry for my pitiful attempt at trading!), but what a way to do it. I had successfully picked the 8th largest riser of the day (up about 8.5% over the day) and I had got out before it dropped. Bearing in mind that it takes me a year to get about 4% on my ISA, this is a HUGE return.

So hey, right now I know I’m not going to go crazy and start throwing cash into shares, rather I’m going to do my research and try and use my brain to work out this industry, but as a way to build some excitement, nothing can beat jumping in feet first!

It's an odd one this, I was planning on writing a piece on this, in fact I still will, but just thought I'd let you know that an interesting discussion looks like it's starting over on Young Entrepeneur's Journey

Please put any comments on this over there.

Matt

Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious..... B.C. Forbes