OMG – 100k. There it was glistening in my bank account. Written out in full, it looks like this: CHF 100,000.-  A pleasing array of noughts, though not quite so rotund and perfect in USD ($109,450) or GBP (£78,952), but I'm not complaining.

No time to waste, I mutter to myself, tearing my eyes away from the alluring roundness. Now the focus was on me. Could I put his money where my mouth is. Or rather my money where my mouth was. I dismissed an image of me choking on a bundle of thousand franc notes. 

Maybe I had been too boastful, maybe this was going to be embarrassing? Nonsense, I snapped my fingers. I've got an algorithm that has done well. Applied to the real world, it would have made 20% over 12 months.   That would have turned Ed's money into 120,000.- 10 thousand for me and 10 for him. That would pay for a fair bit of electricity, even at Swiss prices. And plenty of Guinness for Ed.

The theory is that you shouldn't pile straight in and blow all your cash at once.  Invest slowly, regularly and over many weeks and months. That way you minimise the risks of a sudden crash. Yeah right - like I've  got time for that.  I've got my list of winners - hold on tight, here we go!