my daughter asked me to explain what I do for a living.

I said: I find small companies in Europe that nobody knows about and I buy their shares.

she said: so you are a stock trader.

I said: no. stock traders buy and sell quickly. I buy and hold for years.

she said: so you buy things and then do nothing.

I said: yes but the doing nothing is very stressful.

she said: that sounds fake.

I said: last week I spent three hours reading a PDF in Estonian about a sewage pipe manufacturer and then I could not sleep because I was too excited about their gross margins.

she looked at me for a long time.

she said: please do not tell my friends what you do.

she is right. I have tried explaining this at dinner parties. people's eyes go somewhere else around the words "Hungarian laundry equipment distributor." I have learned to say "I work in finance" and change the subject.

"I work in finance" is technically true in the same way that a man who builds a boat in his garage "works in marine engineering."

but it keeps the conversation going.

and nobody asks follow-up questions.

which is fine.

the last person who asked a follow-up question got a forty-minute explanation of Bulgarian dividend withholding tax treaties and has not spoken to me since.