Barton had the advantage of his time zone; the same as that of New York’s, even though closing prices were out of sync with those in European markets. By being at his Bloomberg at three in the morning he caught the opening session in Europe taking advantage of the frequent sharp price movements as traders reacted to previous day’s events on the New York exchanges.
In regular trading he employed automatic stops to avoid losses due to sudden and unforeseen violent movements, closing positions if the price moved in an unfavourable direction by more than a predetermined sum. Markets were of course unpredictable and betting that stocks could go down was just as profitable as betting that stocks would go up.
Barton’s prime motivation for betting on the stock market was to create a regular source of income as he could not expect to live on his capital for the rest of his life. Soon he found himself putting in more than twelve hours a day at his terminal and realized betting on the market was becoming an obsession. Whenever he took a break from the blinking screens he spent his time studying his sources: newspapers, magazines, news letters, collecting tips from investors in the wealthy circle of expats that had befriended him, studying the world news and monitoring the daily crisis that affected markets and last but not least relying on his own instinct.
It required nerve and tenacity, but at any instant he could return to a wholly cash position if he felt he needed to take a breath. Tom Barton was no economist, but his experience as a City mortgage broker had given him a certain insight into not only the workings of the average man’s finances, but also an insight into the financial psychology of men and markets. Now, after more than nine months of self-imposed exile, a salutary experience, he had a clearer perception of how the wider world functioned.
At the beginning of his odyssey he had discovered the heady atmosphere of Dubai real-estate, then the somewhat naive and illusory pride of India and its new economy. He then succesively experienced the exhilarating atmosphere of maturing South East Asian countries, yachts and oligarchs in the Aegean, and finally the USA; in particular Florida, where the full impact of consumer deleveraging was building up to the fiercest economic crisis since the Great Depression. It was one of those historic moments when a daring investor could become rich, the question was how? It was certain that there would be no easy pickings in the City of London for some time to come, though for the astute investor there were always opportunities, especially with banking shares were at an all time low.
Perhaps he should head for China, but things were not looking so bright as their exports had suddenly shrunk by almost one quarter compared to the same period of the previous year — like those of practically every other East Asian country. But when he remembered the Chinese were holding one and a half trillion dollars in foreign reserves, money earned in the manufacture of goods using cheap Chinese labour and cheap plant, it would not be a good place to be if the dollar got into serious trouble. China had transformed its economy thanks to the US, and now US workers were paying the price as their jobs disappeared.
More than two months had passed since he had arrived in the small island republic of Dominica and was settling into his new life and the daily routine he had set for himself. After India and Thailand he become used to, if not entirely adapted to, the tropical climate. What pleased him was Dominicans spoke English; that is when they did not lapse into their local creole. In addition he had made a number of friends, mostly neighbours and Brits like himself.
Another advantage was the possibility of being able to move money in and out without questions being asked, much different to the raised eyebrows he had been met with in a Biarritz bank, or the incomprehensible bureaucracy of Indian banks not to speak of the language difficulties in Thailand.
To Barton, Dominica was an unspoilt paradise, a haven of tranquillity, ideally situated between the more developed French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique. There was no real international airport to speak of in Dominica. To fly to London, Paris or Miami there were daily feeder flights to the French islands or Antigua, and an express ferry from Roseau to Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe.
Dominica was not only the most ecologically well-preserved island of the Caribbean, with its rainforests covered mountains, it was also a haven of peace, where the cost of living was reasonable, where a man like Barton could savour the easy going vestiges of Britain’s colonial past and from where he could observe the world. There was even an economic citizenship program that provided him with a second passport. It was a far cry from the misery of India’s ‘Rooster Coop’ described by Aravid Adiga in his novel The White Tiger, and equally far from the second class tourists of Kovalam. There were not the crowds and noise of Bangkok or Phuket with its tourist masses, and compared to the artificial world that Dubai had built for itself it was another planet.
There was also the anonymity. He had no wish to be back in London and the prospect of a wet winter in Biarritz was depressing, especially as Sophie would be busy with her almost weekly trips to London. Dominica had not yet been invaded by the usual tourist hordes and the kinds of ills so many tropical paradises attract. There were no big hotels, tourist resorts, not even golf courses.
There were however all modern conveniences such as broadband Internet access, cable television and cell phone services that functioned efficiently across the island, and of course that vitally important service — international banking. The capital, Roseau, was a pleasant peaceful backwater, without traffic lights, without shopping malls; it was in short the kind of place where Barton could watch the rest of the world drift by.
The only negative point was the seasonal threat of hurricanes, though to that point in time all he had seen was a couple of fairly heavy tropical storms. The villa, as the entire Emerald Pool development, was built in hurricane resistant concrete and the site designed to safely drain the torrents of rain that lashed the island whenever Mother Nature turned vicious.