While wilfing away a day or two ago, I saw a link to a feature called ‘Football - the New Porn?’ I didn’t click on it as my wilfing took me elsewhere, and I’m not a big fan of football (soccer to you Americans), but the headline stuck in my head for some reason.
It was from some serious newspaper like The Guardian and The Times (of London), so it probably didn’t use expressions like ‘having a wank’ or ‘jerking off’. Probably just some stupid article which basically says ‘football is really popular’ (which anyone with half a brain has known for the last decade anyway) which the journalist in question gave a teasing headline to and made a few half-arsed analogies in so as to get it past his editor.
I tried to find it again, but couldn’t.
As I think I’ve mentioned on this blog before, I’ve never been a big sports fan. My Dad was never into football and nor were any of my friends and I came from a small town that was nowhere close to any of the interesting clubs that actually had a chance of winning anything and so I got involved in other blokey interests, most notable of which was music.
Since then, my interest in football has increased a little, but really only with international games where my natural jingoism comes out as I actually care (a bit) as to whether one side wins or loses. In this respect, I show a loyalty to England (naturally) but also to the Czech Republic which still feels like my adopted homeland even though I haven’t lived there for more than six years now. Also more minor loyalties to Russia and Latvia. But still I only pay a passing interest to it.
I am a little more interested in motor sports – Formula One and the World Rally Championship, but I have to admit that it’s unbearably boring to actually watch either of these sports take place – even more boring than football – because nothing ever seems to happen. In Formula One, the only thing you’re watching for is to see if someone breaks down, crashes or if they spend too long in the pits, which means the mechanics are a lot more influential than the drivers.
So, contrary to the old adage, for me at least, it’s not the taking part, it’s the winning that counts. Because all I am interested in seeing is results, not the events unfolding. And the only interest that I have in the results is hoping that the English/British team does better than the French/Italian or German teams.
But over the past few days I have noticed that I have developed a much greater interest in a completely different sport, and that’s foreign exchange rates.
This is much more interesting to me than any sports event for a variety of reasons. The first is that, whereas watching sports results only matters to me because of some national pride in relation to a country that I turned my back on five years ago, I actually have a fair bit of money riding on the results of the ForEx sport. It’s the same as having taken a bet out on some of the sporting competitions, and having a gamble is an exciting thing, I have to admit, even though, as I have pointed out in a previous posting, it is a complete mug’s game because the house/bookies are always going to end up as the winners.
But with the foreign currency markets, there are no middlemen to stack the odds against you and so it is a fair fight and, like it or not, the outcome of the ’sport’ has a major impact upon the money in my pocket.
I won’t bore you with the details, but I need to keep a close eye on the British Pound (GBP) as this is the currency I am mostly paid in, but I also earn a bit in Euros (EUR) and need to pay a lot of money out in EUR over the next couple of weeks. Most of my expenses, however, are paid out in Egyptian Pounds (EGP), so I need to keep an eye out on that as well. The Egyptian Pound is tied to the US Dollar (USD) which is also the currency that Russians (who are a small part of our client base) like to deal in. But the larger share of our clients at the moment are Polish and so I need to keep an eye on the Polish Zloty (PLN) as well.
So that’s five different currencies that I need to monitor and which I have the ones that I like (GBP and PLN) and want to do well, and the ones that I want to die badly (EGP and EUR).
Which is a bit similar to the qualifiers for the next World Cup, for example, hoping that some get through to the next round and that some suffer a set of ignominious defeats.
Unlike the World Cup qualifiers where there are matches only every few weeks or months, the great ForEx battles rage day and night ad infinitum and, in these crazy financial times, there’s always something to look out for.
As of last week, the USD was easily top of the group, with the EGP riding on its coat-tails to take second place. The GBP and EUR were very much mid-table, with the poor PLN getting a humiliating battering at the end of last week to bring up the rear.
But the mighty USD’s run of form ran out a little earlier today, with the GBP and EUR gaining ground on them. But, most importantly of all, the plucky little PLN scored a last minute equalizer earlier today through clawing back 10% of its losses against the GBP and EUR in order to avoid its being relegated. For now at least.
Tomorrow though, everything could be different again because, in this game, you’re only as good as your next match.
So, as the credit crunch continues to bite and the spectre of global recessions looms large over us all, ForEx could be the new football and, if football is the new porn, then surely this must make ForEx the new, new porn.
