Street Scenes from the Other Side of the World

Third post in this series:

1996-2002:

2007-Present:


The most noticeable thing about these pictures I think is the sunshine :) It's not been like that much recently.

Another Continent

Street scenes from the other side of the ocean:

1990-1991:


1991-1992:


1992-1993:


1995-1996:


2002-2007:


Yes, when I was in grad school I ended up moving every year. Since then, I've been much slower to move.

Revisiting the Old Neighborhood

I was inspired by these posts to put up some pictures of places I used to live. The difference in my case is that they all look much the same as when I lived there and I'm twice the age of Ken! For three countries I've lived in I could just go to Google Earth and capture pictures. No need to actually travel :) So to kick off here is Britain below. I've tried to capture a feeling of the streets and I've just labeled them by when I lived there. It's pretty easy to guess where they are though :)

1964-1966:


1966-1983:


1989-1990:


1993-1994:


The only changes are really the models of the cars and in the 1966-1983 place the size of the plants in the gardens and the recycling bins.

Qantas Technical Analysis

I haven't done this kind of thing for a while :) Looking at the Qantas chart there is a clear resistance line at $1.80. TA theory would say that if we get above that we probably won't go below it again in a hurry. It's interesting a friend said he thinks there will be a new buyout offer at $1.80 - Seems very low though to me... Don't know if it based on anything solid or just rumors he heard (my friends are in places where you can hear interesting rumors). Anyway, there is also an inverse head and shoulders formation in Qan that would take it to about $2.10 if it works. The most recent low in QAN is higher than the previous one and there is some sign that volume is declining through the formation, though hardly a classic pattern.

Moominmama Portfolio Performance November 2011

And back down again this month. The portfolio was heavily affected by the rise in the US Dollar reducing the value of non-USD assets in USD terms.

It was Moominmama's 80th birthday today, by the way, and my 47th birthday. Yes, we have the same birthday. We did a Skype video hook up across the time zones. Snork Maiden, my brother (doing the tech stuff at their end), and the live in helper that looks after my Mom (though she only lives in the next building to my brother) were all in on the call. My brother is moving to a bigger apartment, but it is just a block away. Hopefully, I'll visit some time next year.

Moominvalley November 2011 Report

Things reversed again this month but the losses were actually less than I expected. IN USD terms we lost 6.35%. In AUD terms we lost 3.05% and in currency neutral terms 3.65%. But the MSCI World Index only lost 2.94% for the month. The reason for our underperformance is that the Australian market largely missed out on the global 30th of November rally induced by globally coordinated easing by central banks. The World Index rose by 3.71% on 30th November. So the day before the index was down 6.54% on the month, which is roughly what we lost.

Anyway, here are this month's accounts in USD:



USD net worth fell by $20k but in AUD terms we were only down $A1k. . Net worth is at $531k or AUD 519k. Total non-investment income was $20k. Just over $3k of that came from a refund I got for our trip to the US in September-October. I'm still awaiting a couple of other travel refunds. Retirement contributions are now running at $4k a month as we are both contributing near the maximal concessional amount ($A25k per annum) including employer contributions. Investments lost a total of $35k with $15k of that due to foreign exchange movements as the US Dollar rose against other currencies. Total spending was $6,065 but almost $1,000 of that was a trip I took to Queensland which should be refunded. So spending was around our "new normal" of $5,000 per month.

Yeah, these numbers in terms of non-investment income are feeling pretty crazy to me. You can see how quickly things have changed when you look back over the last several months of reports.