Moomin Valley

Personal Finance, Investing, and Economics

Friday, June 30, 2006

FOMC Day

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Apparently the markets think the Fed's statement is bullish. I was short and suffered a big loss. Mainly due to being short individual s...
Thursday, June 29, 2006

The Market Went up Today... Better News from Australia

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The market went up today, but my model is still on short heading into the FOMC announcement tomorrow. We are getting close to a turning poin...
Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Croesus Mining Declares Bankruptcy

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I wrote in an earlier post about the trading halt in the shares of Australian gold miner Croesus Mining. In the last couple of days the fir...
4 comments:
Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Kiyosaki Wrong on Mutual Funds

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I like a lot of what Robert Kiyosaki says usually and there are serious problems with a lot of mutual funds, but the basic point in his colu...
7 comments:

Market Forecast

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Despite the market being up today all my newly developed indicators are pointing the same way - down. Some other indicators and the chart pa...
2 comments:
Monday, June 26, 2006

Technical Analysis Modeling

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Been spending a lot of time recently on developing new technical analysis methods (commonly known also as "charting" - but the stu...
Friday, June 23, 2006

Plutonomy

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Plutonomy is a term invented by some analysts at Citigroup. Download their articles here . The central thesis goes against everything you pr...

The Correction Continues - Technical Analysis

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We are still in what I believe is a correction of the 14 June rally in US stock markets. Even though yesterday's rally exceeded the prev...
Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Trading Diary Part II

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9:33am I won't post hour by hour detail today. Have a big meeting from 12-2 anyway. Market is showing early strength. For the moment I w...
Monday, June 19, 2006

Trading Diary

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Today I am trying to exit from my previous strategy and initiate the new one. 9:54am I went into today short 100 GOOG and 500 QQQQ in my tra...
Sunday, June 18, 2006

Mid-Month Update

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As of 16 June net worth has declined to $304k (down $14k) with an investment return for June so far of -4.56%. The MSCI global index (in USD...
1 comment:
Saturday, June 17, 2006

New Short-Term Trading Plan

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After my experiences over the last couple of months I have developed a new trading plan to try to implement a bit more discipline. This does...
3 comments:

Comfortable Being Bearish

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Went into today with my Ameritrade account short and added to the shorts and bought puts in my Roth IRA. So far it is working out. And I fee...
Friday, June 16, 2006

Trading and Emotions

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I am now at the point where I know good money-making trades but the problem is actually executing them. Seems that all the recent volatility...
Sunday, June 11, 2006

Net Worth Update

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After last week's "trauma" I did a thorough update of the results so far this month. Investment return is -2.67% but the MSCI ...
2 comments:
Friday, June 09, 2006

Stressful Trading Day

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Today is a day when everything went wrong. Here are just some of the things 1. I went into the day long even though I didn't really have...
Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Today's Report

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I think there is still more downward movement coming in the stockmarkets in the next week or two, but today I sold most of my put options (k...
Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Net Worth in Australia

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An http://blogs.realestate.com.au/newsandviews/2006/04/household_wealth_built_on_bric.html ">interesting article about net worth le...
Sunday, June 04, 2006

Kondratieff Waves and Deflation

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Michael Alexander has begun a new series of articles on SafeHaven. His analysis can look a little weird to mainstream economists like me bu...
Saturday, June 03, 2006

Levels of Frugality and Wealth Creation

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There is a lot of personal finance advice out there on the web and a lot of it is quite good, but of course little or none of it is tailored...
2 comments:
Friday, June 02, 2006

Monthly Report for May

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I am happy with my financial performance this month and this year so far. Net worth increassed $6413 to $318482. It would have been stronger...
4 comments:
Thursday, June 01, 2006

Follow-Up on US Retirement Accounts

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I've done a bit more research since posting on the retirement account puzzle . I now see that there are more options to get the money ou...
4 comments:
Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Hussmann and Svenlin on the Stockmarket

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Here is the latest from Hussmann on the stockmarket. He seems to be one of the smarter guys around with regard to market analysis. Basicall...
2 comments:
Sunday, May 28, 2006

Portfolio Update

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This is the first time I have provided a snapshot of the allocation spreadsheet I use to give myself a picture of my portfolio and calculate...
Saturday, May 27, 2006

Two Interesting Articles from the Economist

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One story about the world economy and state of the financial markets and another with the latest edition of the Big Mac Index . Seems to me...
Friday, May 26, 2006

Timing the Market

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Today stock markets are rising around the world. The decline to this point hasn't received much attention outside the financial media. S...
Thursday, May 25, 2006

More Volatility

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Today was another volatile day in the financial markets. Gold fell - obviously the wave 2 correction I disucssed yesterday is not over but w...
Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Evening Market Update / Gold Chart

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Like the US stockmarket today, Asian stockmarkets opened higher but have reversed at this point after Hong Kong opened at 10pm EDT. Though...
3 comments:

Another Crazy Day in US Markets

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First the stockmarket was up strongly and then towards the close it slid heavily - a slide that continued after the official close. This was...
Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Stockmarket Slide Continues - Is Slowing Growth or Rising Inflation Responsible?

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The slide in global stockmarkets continued today (and tonight in Asia). Not getting a lot of attention yet in the mainstream media (in the U...
Monday, May 22, 2006

NetWorthIQ Top Ten List

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I just entered the NetWorthIQ Top Ten List . Cool :) Probably it's because I am the top of the most active user list . Just got back fro...
Thursday, May 11, 2006

More Good Tax News

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More good tax news for investors on this side of the Pacific today. Interesting factoid in the article is that only 23% of people in the $5...
2 comments:

Another Fed Day

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Nothing unexpected for me in the announcement. After the announcement at 2:15pm, the dollar fell, bonds rose, gold rose, oil rose, and non-r...
Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Australia Simplifies its Retirement Accounts System

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In the Federal Budget announced last night, treasurer Peter Costello, announced among other things a simplification of the superannuation sy...
Sunday, May 07, 2006

Sell Signal on the S&P 500 and Dow Industrials

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The S&P 500 and Dow Industrials rallied strongly on Friday (punching through the 34 day Bollinger Bands indicator I like to use). Thi...
4 comments:
Saturday, May 06, 2006

The Retirement Account Puzzle

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One thing that puzzles me after my explorations in NetWorthIQ and PFBlog space is the obsession with retirement accounts. Many people write ...
6 comments:
Friday, May 05, 2006

Reflections on PF Bloggers

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I've been reading plenty of these PF blogs as well as creating my own since discovering the NetWorthIQ website . It is very interesting ...
4 comments:
Thursday, May 04, 2006

The Fed Isn't Printing Money

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Despite the ravings of many goldbugs and other conspiracy theorists the Fed is not printing money. The ">chart of the M1 money supp...
3 comments:
Wednesday, May 03, 2006

April Report

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After a bit of a run around I bought a new firewire cable and got into the portable hard drive with my most uptodate accounts on it. Of cour...
Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Global Markets Update

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Here is Bill Gross' latest commentary. The last days and weeks have seen rapid movements in exchange rates, interest rates, stock price...
Saturday, April 29, 2006

Weekend Links

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John Mauldin 's latest weekly letter is all about the weakening US Dollar and the Federal Reserve. Included is this great ">vide...
2 comments:

End of the Month

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Looks like I made about a 5% investment return for April. Most of the move was due to the strong rally in the Australian Dollar. The core in...
Wednesday, April 26, 2006

What Does the Rise in the Gold Price Mean?

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Interesting article that looks at whether the rising price of gold is a signal of future inflation. Especially interesting is the compariso...
11 comments:
Thursday, April 20, 2006

Potential Crash Warning

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One of the things that maybe gives me some trading edge is a technical analysis indicator I developed myself. It is very different to tradit...
5 comments:

Sell in May and Go Away

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Great article by Mark Hulbert on the "Sell in May and Go Away" saying. It is true that stocks perform worse in the summer and bet...
2 comments:
Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Buying and Holding an Index Fund is so 20th Century

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Article on MoneyCentral introducing some alternative investment ideas for beginners. Also, Yahoo has an article on finding the best fund m...
1 comment:

More Bond Bulls

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These guys' Q1 report - highlighted in John Mauldin's latest letter - has an identical viewpoint to my own on inflation, bonds etc...
Monday, April 17, 2006

Savings vs. Profits

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I was curious what fraction of my net worth accumulation had come from saving and how much from investment profits. I created this chart, wh...
Sunday, April 16, 2006

Clustermaps is Amazing

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This Clustermaps application is so amazing! Every day I check the new red spots appear on the map. The latest entrants are for Bangkok, som...
Saturday, April 15, 2006

Is There a Housing Bubble?

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There have been a couple of recent economic studies published that argue that there is no housing bubble. One paper by Himmelberg et al. an...
4 comments:
Friday, April 14, 2006

Wealth Distribution

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There has been some discussion on NetWorthIQ about what fraction of the US and world population are millionaires. It is surprisingly hard t...
1 comment:
Wednesday, April 12, 2006

$300,000

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Today I exceeded $300,000 in net worth for the first time. This is based on an update of all values yesterday and the change in exchange rat...
1 comment:
Sunday, April 09, 2006

Check that Tax Return!

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Today I got my tax assessment letter from the IRS. Now I know why the refund they paid me was $1250.00 less than I expected. I forgot to fi...

Picking Stocks is Hard

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Looks like Croesus Mining will survive though I have no idea what the shares will trade at on 28 April when the suspension ends. One reason...
Friday, April 07, 2006

Turning Point in the Bond Market?

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Great article from Bill Gross explaining why the bear market in bonds (equals rising long term bond rates) should be almost over. It's ...
Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Salary Increase and March Report

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Got the letter today. 1.5%. Inflation is 3.6% p.a. currently. The pool for all salary increases was 2.5%. The rest of the letter went on abo...
Sunday, April 02, 2006

Federal Tax Refund

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Received my refund and it is more than $1200 less than expected :( Will have to wait to get a statement to see why there is such a large dis...
Saturday, April 01, 2006

Google Enters the S&P 500 Index

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Crazy action at the end of the trading day and after hours as GOOG entered the S&P 500 Index and Google's 5.3 million secondary shar...
5 comments:
Friday, March 31, 2006

Are We at a Market Top?

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I think the probability that the downphase of the four year cycle is now underway is getting higher. Been looking over various of the usual...
2 comments:

pfblog.org

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This site is cool. LInks to almost 400 personal finance blogs and data on how many visits they have received and how many clicks have been ...

Gold

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I bought some gold for the first time ever today (in my Roth IRA). This is through the Exchange Traded Fund GLD . Gold broke out of the trad...
Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Millionaire Households

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Article on millionaire households. Not surprisingly Los Angeles County is #1 as it is the most populous county in the country (10 million p...

Fed Day

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Today is the day of the Federal Reserve statement - at 2:15pm - and it will be Ben Bernanke's first... The buzz on Silicon Investor and...
Friday, March 24, 2006

International Barriers and Bridges

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Yesterday I decided to cancel a trip to speak at a university in the southern US. They told me that as I wasn't a US citizen (but am an ...
3 comments:
Wednesday, March 22, 2006

The Four Year Stock Cycle

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Coverage of the four year stock cycle on CNN Money.
Thursday, March 16, 2006

Daytrading vs. Savings Accounts

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Stealthbucks commented that he was curious that so many personal finance bloggers seem really excited about savings accounts from Emigrant ...
2 comments:
Wednesday, March 15, 2006

$A400,000

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Looks like I just went over $A400,000 in net worth... Three hundred thousand US Dollars remains elusive though due to the weakness in the Au...

Credit Scores

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Good article by David Bach on credit scores. I don't like a lot of what this guy writes, particularly on housing, but seems there is a ...
Sunday, March 12, 2006

Trade Analysis

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Most people probably don't analyse their investment performance as much as I do. My motives are to find what works and see whether I can...
Saturday, March 11, 2006

Leverage

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Some posters on NetWorthIQ have criticized my use of margin or said: "well it's not for me - good luck". Leverage through marg...
3 comments:
Friday, March 10, 2006

Bullish Percentage

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Yeah, I am getting bashed in the markets, giving up profits I made earlier this and last month, though as only a fraction of my net worth is...
2 comments:
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About Me

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mOOm
I'm an economist and an active investor and currently live in Australia. I'm a global investor though I focus on investments in the Anglophone world and particularly in Australia. This blog tracks investment performance and discusses personal finance, investing, and trading from an economic perspective. In the picture, Moomin is looking for treasure.
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