Wake up, log on and check overnight emails from the USA. No breakfast. I know that the ‘experts’ recommend a hearty start to the day, but I’m suspicious of experts, and in any case – most of the thin people I know do skip breakfast. I have to get rid of these few excess pounds I’m carrying somehow.

On to the Barclays Stockbrokers Research Centre to check the risers and fallers at the market open. Biggest fallers will come into my thinking as possible candidates for purchases in my BARXdirect: Financial Spread Trading account, with a tight stop order in case they keep falling. Risers won’t be candidate sales, but if they are in my portfolio I’ll ratchet up the stop orders on them to lock in more profits.

Instead of cracking on with my usual work as a freelance writer, it’s the school holidays so I need to take my daughter to the theatre where she’s been attending the drama group ‘summer school’ all week. I’ll be stuck using the theatre restaurant as an office today, so must check that I have all my ‘mobile office’ kit with me: laptop, broadband dongle etc.

It’s 10.15am, and in a quiet corner of the theatre I do an hour’s work on the article I’m writing as educational material for fellow ‘private’ – i.e. non-professional, but by no means amateur – traders.

Ok, so it took longer than an hour (now 12 noon) and my tummy is rumbling. My favourite café in town has free Wi-Fi that is more reliable than my mobile broadband; so I’ll have a long lunch there. I wonder how many of the other diners are checking the foreign exchange markets while tucking in to their paninis?

Back at ‘theatre’ base camp I check my Financial Spread Trading portfolio (again!). I’ve had a really good run over the past six months (and this has not always been the case). Thanks to the power of leverage, manually trailed stop orders, and pyramiding of freed-up margin, I have turned a meager initial deposit into quite a tidy sum. And it’s tax-free! I know how punishing the markets can be on leveraged positions, but by carefully ratcheting up my stop orders, I have secured an increasing amount of profit. Of course, it may not have turned out that way. These are high-risk investments; I could easily have lost more than I had invested but I am prepared to accept these risks.

I close all of the ‘rolling’ spread bets that I have held for months as though they were regular ‘investments’, and I telephone to request a withdrawal of funds so my profits are now bound for my bank account. Not much interest to be had on cash in the bank at the moment, so I think I might top up my Investment ISA, especially with the increased limits on the horizon in the next tax year.

After running another couple of errands, I realise that theatre school has finished for the day. No chance of getting back home before the UK market closes, but the US markets will have another few hours left to run - and foreign exchange markets – with all their risks and challenges which I know only too well - stay open 24-hours a day!