March 2009 Moominvalley Report

We gained this month and so did the markets and we beat the market again. The following is based on the available data as a couple of funds won't report till near the end of the month. As usual everything is in US Dollars unless otherwise stated. I'll continue with the less formal format I adopted last month.

The MSCI World Index rose 8.29% in USD terms and the SPX rose 8.76%. We gained 11.33% in USD terms (3.22% in AUD terms). Performance was strongest in Australian stocks (9.07%) and the Australian Dollar gained. Leverage also helped for a change. Alpha measured against the USD MSCI rose to 4%.

We spent $3052 which is a bit below recent levels. The main mitigating factor is that according to Redbook the value of our car rose which I treat as negative consumption. Snork Maiden was surprised though as with her parents here we expected we would have spent much more than normal.



As you can see from these accounts our retirement accounts did much better than non-retirement investments this month. Net worth reached $202k ($A292k). Asset allocation moved away from our target as Australian stocks gained strongly and the shares of everything else in our portfolio fell:



The craziness of the financial crisis is evident in this chart of monthly returns:



As mentioned above, performance so far this calendar year has been better than the market even when adjusted for leverage in fact:



Points above the regression line are market beating on a risk adjusted basis. The slope of the line is "beta" in this sample.