Houston, we've lost you

From research supremo to Phileas Fogg. Such is the path being taken by Andrew Houston, the former research boss at JPMorgan (and before that, Jardine Fleming), who has just quit.

The plucky ex-Gurkha, who combines an encyclopaedic knowledge of James Bond trivia with a love of EVA, has decided that enough is enough and that he wants to travel the world before it is too late. He says he asked himself over the Summer, "Have I done enough in my life" and realized the answer was no. He also recognized that another bear market was upon us, and he wasn't sure he wanted to tough it out and go through another bout of downsizing.

He tells FinanceAsia that he will go to Rome first, but will then travel back to Thailand (where he made his name in research, and received death threats for his negative calls before the Asian crisis) -- and while in Thailand will scout out the condo market, where he says there is great value ("it can't get any cheaper") and where he says a 3500 square foot condo can be bought for under $300,000.

He will then go to Darjeeling, a place which his father has told him great things about, and then he'll go to Kenya (on safari) and then Egypt. After that he will tour South America.

Unlike Phileas Fogg, his tour will take considerably longer than 80 days and will not end at the Reform Club, but probably back in Asia. Houston has decided that his days as an analyst may not be over, and that he may return to the fold once he has seen the world. Or alternatively he might publish a salacious and witty book about the last 10 years of Asian finance.