May 2009 Monthly Moomin Valley Report

I finally worked out the fault in my accounts: a minus sign instead of a plus sign in front of the gain for Platinum Capital for the month! The following is based on the available data as a couple of funds as usual won't report till near the end of the month, when I'll give a final asset class performance report. As usual everything is in US Dollars unless otherwise stated.

The MSCI World Index rose 10.08% in USD terms and the SPX rose 5.59%. We gained 8.84% in USD terms (-0.34% in AUD terms zand 2.73% in currency neutral terms). The Australian Dollar again appreciated strongly against the USD from 73.17 US cents to 79.91 US cents.

Performance was strongest in Australian small cap and foreign stocks and weakest in real estate and private equity. Alpha measured against the USD MSCI was 2.1% with a beta of 1.11 currently. Though performance for the month was good in USD terms it was below par in risk adjusted terms. The fitted rate of return from the model was 11.4% while we only returned 8.8%.

We spent $3,570, which is surprisingly low given that we and the Snorkparents went to Queensland in May. Most of the Queensland expenditures had already been incurred up front though. In Australian Dollars we spent $A4,468. Since Snork Maiden and I have lived together there have only been six months with lower spending (14 with higher spending). So it really is near the low end:



Non-investment income was boosted above our regular salaries by a $A900 stimulus payment from the Australian government and $A1,200 in cash that the Snorkparents insisted on leaving with us rather than taking back to China to exchange...

Net worth reached $261k ($A327k). Asset allocation moved away from our target but there were no dramatic changes this month:



I plan on trimming the allocation to Australian large cap stocks if and when the stock market recovers further while increasing allocations to managed futures etc. In the meantime we are trying to rebuild our allocation to foreign stocks from the bear market devastation we suffered. Leverage again reduced a little mainly due to paying off $A2,000 of my CommSec margin loan as well as bit of reduction in credit card debt and positive investment performance.