Planning

A beautiful day here today - trying to appreciate it a little in between the things I have to do. The market has been making me nervous too as I've been confused lately about its direction. It's looking better this afternoon and I don't think I have to bail out (I'm long, though the model is short - go figure). So I can relax a little. The beginning of the Fall Semester is when we start planning for the Spring Semester. I requested to teach classes in the middle of the day most days of the week so I'm free from teaching at market closes and opens. As you can see I am getting addicted to trading :) Most profs try to concentrate all their classes into two days a week. But I have found that pretty tiring. Teaching is like acting or performing in some way. This way I spread my various activities across the week rather than concentrated. Not sure whether I've blogged about my longer term career plans? The downside of academia is immobility and I want to get out of that trap. I also am much less interested in the research part of the job than I was. In fact I enjoy more the management/adminstration aspects now! As long as something useful is getting done by doing them. I am trying to develop trading as a mobile do anywhere source of income that will give me much more flexibility. It won't neccessarily be my main activity. But I would be free to go where I like and do what I want. I am not planning on working in one job or career until I am 65 and then retiring. Why do the same thing your entire life? You only get one life to try out different things. But if I want to stay in the US I first need to get my green card and I am waiting and still waiting. The main driver is on the personal side. My girlfriend is also a potential immigrant and will be limited to visa-compatible jobs employment-wise. Total lottery where those potential jobs may be. The probability that they are close to where my current job is is infinitesimally small. Actually she was just talking about jobs in Sweden again... I won't rule it out, though am not really looking forward to another international move. Probably anyway it would be a 1-2 year position. OTOH I can travel to and live in Sweden with no problems as I have European citizenship.

On another planning front we are finally moving my mother's account from Citibank to two other financial management firms. I had high hopes from Citibank when we opened the account 4 years back and initially we got a decent guy assigned as our "relationship manager". But since then service has gone downhill. Don't think that if you have $1-2 million you will get any better service than a small investor. Many discount brokerage firms would put Citibank to shame. I was reading recently about why wealthy clients dumped managers. The number one reason was poor customer service, not poor investment performance. We just wanted no-hassle peace of mind and as long as we are making a little money we aren't concerned neccessarily about pursuing the highest returns. The last thing I wanted is for my mother to worry about what was happening with her money. One of the new providers is UBS. We will see if they live up to their image of better customer service. The other is a small local firm where she lives. Over time, we will probably place more money with the smaller firm if they are nice to us :) But we can't transfer some of our funds to their custody and don't want to sell them and therefore also need the big bank.