MONDAY
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!" Yogi cried out as he rallied for our investment briefing this morning, as though a line of English longbowmen was behind him as he charged the bear market.
The trouble is, a bear won't be charged. It just sits there napping, as billions fall off share prices. "I suppose it is a good time to go to America. Because there's nothing for us here," he eventually sighed.
"Gold stocks are expected to stage a dead cat bounce," said FastCash, the head of research, whose proclamation roused a few day traders from their swags. Several had spent the night at my place, hoping for a dawn raid. As it happened, we slept until 11 to slough off the vodka martinis.
TUESDAY
It seems that FastCash has recovered from his girlfriend Roxy's surrender to the predatory designs of Eldrick, a notorious Estonian day trader. FastCash was inconsolable after Roxy tattooed an Estonian kroon on her cleavage, alongside the Aussie and the Polish zloty. I felt sorry for him, but she deserves sympathy, too - as would anyone indelibly burdened with a kroon tattoo.
I sense that he has recovered because he seems to have fallen in love again; this time with a young Tasmanian girl whose name he won't say. He just looks dreamily at a map of Tassie and mutters something in Tasmanian.
The Tasmanian is all that stands between our first investment tour of America and us. FastCash simply won't leave without her.
"Can't she come along?" Yogi asked at this morning's day traders summit meeting.
An awkward silence.
"Well, in principle, she may," said Doomsday, our bear market analyst, who is something of a stickler for protocol. He also happens to be team leader of our American tour.
"But, the by-laws of the day trading syndicate expressly state that only serious investment professionals may accompany us on our country investment tours. And I understand that your Tasmanian is not a serious investment professional?" Doomsday's voice contained a hint of relish and the pomposity of a diehard committee man.
"My Tasmanian is the nicest, most beautiful, most serious Tasmanian investment professional you'll ever meet, and I won't listen to this nonsense!" yelled FastCash. "Anyway, there are many examples of the financially illiterate joining our tours!"
"Indeed," said Yogi. "I took Penny on our Albanian emerging market tour in 2006. Remember? Penny was a moron. She hadn't even broken her piggy bank. She gave her entire bumbag to that legless, armless beggar. Poor little bloke - just a thorax on a trolley. I can't think how the thorax opened her bumbag."
It was true. How Penny, Yogi's last walker, got a gong to Albania I'll never know.
"Yoges is right," piped up Hugo Grimthorpe, our deeply unpopular contra-cyclical analyst. "You let me take Susan on our Nepal tour. And Susan's personal finances are a joke: 10 credit cards, all of which are overdrawn. Worse, Susan's never invested a penny in Nepal!"
This got Yogi's goat: "Oh yeah? Well, I'll bet Penny has never invested a Susan in Albania!"
"I'll bet she has!"
"She has not!"
And so the afternoon's inanities droned on.
WEDNESDAY
This morning Byron Dawn, our leisure industries analyst, had an announcement to make.
"I'd like my boyfriend Peter to come on our American tour. Pete and I want to get married in California."
This brought the house down. We hadn't realised they were marriage material.
"Yes, but is Peter an experienced investor?" Doomsday wondered aloud, flush with pride at having flushed out FastCash's Tasmanian and still clinging to the by-laws.
"Pete has a $200,000 super fund - 97 per cent of which he has invested in the US securitised subprime mortgage market," Byron said, proudly.
"Aha," said Doomsday. "Another nitwit. Just as I thought. That'll be worth about $4.50. We're not having Peter along - he'll only embarrass us in front of our peers at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan."
Thus began a frenzied afternoon of arguing over who would be acceptable to our American team leader.
THURSDAY
"Well, I want to bring my Opes Prime mates," said Martha-from-Macquarie.
"Nope. They lost everything - they'd be a disaster!" said Doomsday.
FRIDAY
Today, we learnt of a terrible secret from Doomsday: he'd hoped his subprime girlfriend, a ninja (no income - no job) goth called Misery, would accompany him to America.
Professor Valerie Carr-Edwards, our ethical investor adviser, had overruled him, arguing this was unethical. In revenge, Doomsday refused to allow anyone to break the syndicate's by-laws. Only seasoned investors would travel to the land of the sitting bull.
