Canoeists and traders plumb murky depths

Last week in the IFSC was devoted to the construction of the platform from which the weekend's Red Bull Flugtag event took place. Until Friday, I lived in hope that it was an extension to the Spar - cover maybe for the autumn days to come when the lunchtime queues get longer and the chances of getting rained on increase again.

I really wanted to come in on Sunday and see how the flying machines got on, but my hectic lifestyle prevented it. From what I gather, though, most of the vehicles took to the air with all the grace of a government bond following a rate hike. . . I can't believe that people actually got dunked in the Dock and lived to tell the tale. I don't know what the proportion of clear water to other liquids in it is, but not too high is my guess.

Anyway, the Flugtag event kicked off the week-long Docklands Festival and George's Dock features again tomorrow when something called Canoe Polo takes place from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. I have no idea what Canoe Polo is, but I can't help feeling that once again an acquaintance with the murky depths of the dock is going to be part of it.

I like my ingested water to be clear and sparkling with a twist of lemon which precludes any possibility of being involved in Canoe Polo. Just call me boring, I don't care.

Severe difficulties for the southside commuters to the IFSC this week as the latest Quality Bus Corridor engaged first gear. There were pages and pages of newsprint in this and other newspapers giving lots of space to the "it's a disaster" brigade. At the risk of sounding like I'm suffering from northside paranoia, I don't remember half as much fuss about the Malahide QBC. Au contraire, we were just expected to get on with it.

What I can tell the Stillorgan through Donnybrook commuters is that once some buses appear in the QBC, things improve a little. Regular readers may recall that in the early stages of the Malahide QBC there wasn't a bus to be seen which meant that if you were sitting in stationary traffic in Fairview, you at least had an uninterrupted view over the park.

However, in the last few months the number of buses has increased, and although the traffic is certainly slower and you still have the most ridiculous and potentially dangerous junctions you could imagine (Donnycarney springs to mind), it's not as bad as it was.

At the hour of the day I go to work, traffic is still relatively light and I guess I don't have the full appreciation of the good and evils of QBCs during the head-to-head that is peak-time traffic. But I can't see the point of them on Saturdays. And I don't believe that a taxi carrying one person should have any special privilege over a private car carrying one person either.

I occasionally use public transport to or from work. Buses (at least at the time I'm using them) are nowhere near as frequent as the one every two minutes which I saw quoted in Monday's newspaper. The last time I used the bus I waited 15 minutes (and it started to rain) but I've no idea what time the one before it came along.

When I lived in Killester I often tried to take the DART. The problem with that was, since Killester - at the time - was the last station before Connolly, you often couldn't get on the train at all. And when you could, there is no worse way to start the day than crowded into a carriage with your face pressed against a complete stranger's armpit. It is to avoid these unwanted intimacies that people drive.

Naturally, one of the solutions to transport problems is the notion that you can work just as efficiently from home, what with your network and email and all the other useful bits and pieces of the information age. Not as much fun, certainly, but becoming more and more of a reality for a lot of people.

And what can you do at home? Why, foreign exchange trading, of course! I nearly fell off my chair when I read that this is the latest thing in the US. Hot on the heels of day-trading shares, private punters are now being encouraged to trade foreign exchange. Are these people out of their minds? Or, to rephrase that, how out of their minds are they?

Apparently there are a number of brokerages through whom you can now set up and trade in the forex markets. They will allow you to leverage up, so that for a stake of $1,000, you can trade amounts of $100,000. Often the amounts are twice that.

I know a number of ex-forex dealers who now trade on their own account and they know the risks. But it's not ex-forex dealers who are being targeted by the brokerage companies who, as with equity day-trading, promise easy ways to make money. If it's that easy, why are most forex traders burned so soon?

On one website, the company offers advice for would-be traders. This includes a page which tells you how to calculate your profit and loss. If you don't know how to do that, you're in big trouble. Well, actually, you're not - as the site tells you - the dealing screen calculates it for you automatically. Oh, good!

They also offer a number of "golden rules" for trading. Like "adopt a definite plan" and "don't trade too many markets".

You get a potted guide-book to trading - if the Dow goes down it could be because a lot of people are selling US assets and the dollar could go down too. The cost of opening an account is around $5,000 and each trade costs around $16. Mind you, they very kindly tell you that "if you can't afford to lose you can't afford to win".

There isn't a market like the Nasdaq where small forex traders can wheel and deal, you're in there with the commercial banks and central banks. If you're trading smallish amounts - and $100,000 is pretty small in the context of foreign exchange markets - you have to be in and out of the market a lot to make any money. A few good trades and the temptation is there to take bigger positions. One bad trade and you can get wiped. And that's without Alan Greenspan and the Fed mucking around with interest rates.

Sheila O'Flanagan is a fixed-income specialist at NCB Stockbrokers