Around the World in 80 Trades
Channel 4, 10pm How difficult can it be to turn £25,000 into £50,000 when the whole world is your trading floor and you are free to trade every commodity from precious stones to live animals?
Conor Woodman, a successful City market analyst, figured it couldn't be that hard, so, inspired by the prospect of trading in person instead of via a computer screen, he left his job, sold his flat and set off to double his money via African livestock markets and Far Eastern jade sales.
It's a quaint notion. Conor says: "I want to get out and test myself in real markets, haggling face-to-face with hardened traders.
"It's the way people used to do business - buying something, travelling with it and selling it in another place. With any luck, I'll make some serious money. If it goes wrong, I'll lose the lot."
The romanticism evaporates when he comes face to face with camel traders in north Africa, who are bemused by his arrival in their midst, his intention being to sell camels bought in Sudan up the ancient Nile trade route in Egypt.
But this is just the beginning. He has 16 countries on four continents to visit and is soon setting out to sell 4000 bottles of South African chilli sauce to India and spending one-fifth of his investment capital on Chinese jade, confident he's hoping to sell to a rich Taiwanese collector for three times the price.
Body boards endorsed by Mexico's best-known surfer and tequila from the town of Tequila are other investments, but a consignment of Brazilian teak starts to look like a questionable choice as the British building trade falters in the recession.
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