Moomin Valley

Personal Finance, Investing, and Economics

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Market Teetering Between a Crash and a Rally

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My indicators derived from the stochastic were in exactly the same pattern as they are now twice in 2005. Once in mid to late February and o...
Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Confusing Market Action

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Bulls and bears both seem confused at this point. One bear calls for a week of sideways action. This morning the Federal Reserve did a mass...
Sunday, August 27, 2006

Bursting Real Estate Bubble and Coming Recession

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Seems this weekend there is stuff everywhere on the bursting housing bubble. Too much to post! One of the best is this powerpoint slide show...
3 comments:
Saturday, August 26, 2006

Adjusting Investments

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It might seem like all I've been doing lately is trading. But I also have been adjusting my long-term investment positions. I am cutting...
Thursday, August 24, 2006

Model Update - Progress Towards Goals

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At this point it is looking like there will be a buy to cover signal generated at next Tuesday's close. This is about as accurate as wea...
Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Traits that Lead to Success

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How many of these traits and habits do you have? I think I have several, though I'm not a very good networker. That's my weakest po...

DIY Recession Probability Calculator

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Cool tool for estimating the probability of a recession. The tool is based on an academic paper by a Federal Reserve economist.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Expert Systems vs. Expert Opinion

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John Mauldin's latest mid-week newsletter is an interesting exploration of the performance of formal quantitative systems that systemat...
Friday, August 18, 2006

Freestyle Management and Black Box Trading

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There are actively managed mutual funds and then there are " freestyle managers ". A subclass of hedge funds use systematic tradin...
4 comments:

Sell Signal

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I got another short term sell signal at the close today. It is possible that this is the beginning of the big decline into Fall that I have...
1 comment:
Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Are We Still in the 2000- Bear Market?

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I just came across Ian Gordon's website , which has some interesting charts of the Kondratief cycle . He plots the actual stock index (r...
2 comments:
Monday, August 14, 2006

One More Rally?

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I am looking for a rally starting either intraday or at the close on Monday on US and most world stock indices. The rally should last a bit ...
Saturday, August 12, 2006

The Paradox of Indexed Investing

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Recently I have been reading a lot on the theory of trading and hedge funds and musing about what trends in investment strategies mean for t...
3 comments:
Thursday, August 10, 2006

It's Nice When Losers Become Winners

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Today's star is Challenger Infrastructure Fund . I bought into this fund which invests in infrastructure primarily in Britain soon after...

Trading with Stops

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This morning's rally hit my model's stop loss which is set 1.25% from the previous close. I ignored it, which turned out to not be a...
2 comments:
Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Another Fed Day...

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This one a lot better than the last for me.... The day after the last one is when I started running "the model". I am currently sh...
Sunday, August 06, 2006

Secret to Planning a Successful "Retirement"

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Well I don't believe in retirement as usually construed, but thought this was a good article as he seems to be saying the same thing. O...
2 comments:
Saturday, August 05, 2006

End of Week Report

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Today the market rallied initially on an unemployment report and then ended the day lower. The model got stopped out because the NDX rose mo...
2 comments:

Amusing Article about a Hedge Fund Conference

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An amusing article about a hedge fund conference . One guy wants to start a hedge fund and has never traded anything! Even if my trading mod...
Thursday, August 03, 2006

July Report

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Net worth increased by $13059 to $316,244. This is still about two thousand below the May high but a nice recovery. My retirement accounts h...
Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Further Downside Risk?

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The stock futures are off this morning and in recent days the Bank of Japan continues to try to reduce its money supply - a move that has p...

Upside Risk Reduced

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Today the market fell a little, but pretty much went sideways all day. The pop up in the NASDAQ 100 index in the morning extended its tradin...
Monday, July 31, 2006

What Type of Trader are You?

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Everyone trades to some degree, even when they buy or sell a passively indexed investment. Some traders lose from trading and some gain. Fin...
1 comment:
Saturday, July 29, 2006

Going Short

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The model is saying to be short on Monday. I have shorted QQQQ before the end of the day ($37.01). Could be early (the price already went to...
Friday, July 28, 2006

Bill Gross' Latest Commentary

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More evidence that in Gross' opinion the recent bear market in bonds is over.

Limited Transactions on Online Savings Accounts

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One downside of these high interest online savings accounts that I didn't know about till today. Received a letter from HSBC telling me ...
5 comments:
Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Bernanke Financial Disclosure

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Like PF blogs financial disclosures by public officials are always fascinating.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Balance Transfer

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Just completed a balance transfer, paying off about $8500 on my Amazon credit card using a balance transfer from my HSBC credit card. The ba...
1 comment:

Elite Trader

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I have been a member of Silicon Investor for 8 years but only just discovered a site called Elite Trader today. Read an interesting discuss...
Sunday, July 23, 2006

Heads and Shoulders

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No not a special deal on shampoo :) Everywhere you look across the stockmarkets there are head and shoulders formations or closely related ...
2 comments:
Saturday, July 22, 2006

Losing Streak

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The model has now lost money for 5 days in a row :( This is the longest losing streak so far in the simulation I did for this year. On avera...
Friday, July 21, 2006

Trading Performance Update

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Since I have been using the model the NASDAQ 100 Index is down 7%, the model is up 3%, and my account is at... zero. Actually, this is not s...
Thursday, July 20, 2006

Croesus Again

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A glimmer of hope of getting something back from the Croesus debacle . Trading was rough today as I was still short when the market rose in...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Bearish Outlook

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I went long and lost money and then went short and lost money... Of course if I followed my model and rules precisely I would have stayed sh...
3 comments:
Tuesday, July 18, 2006

All Bets Off

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On Tuesday, Japan reversed the change in money supply to reduce money supply relative to last Thursday and plans a further reduction on Wedn...
Monday, July 17, 2006

Bank of Japan Massively Increases Money Supply

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The financial mass media does not discuss this major driver of the stock market very much if at all. More specialized sources are only recen...
1 comment:
Saturday, July 15, 2006

A More Positive Post!

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At mid-month things are looking a lot better than at the end of last month. Since the disastrous 29 June FOMC Day I have recouped my trading...

Ameritrade Sucks But I Love the Streamer

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Today I placed an order to cover my QQQQ short at $35.80. This was 1 cent above the low price of the day. Just as I did so, Ameritrade's...
1 comment:
Friday, July 14, 2006

Change of Plan

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Went long at the open at 36.61 on the QQQQ. Stopped out at 36.45. Went to a long meeting (PhD dissertation defence - environmental research ...
3 comments:
Thursday, July 13, 2006

Cover Shorts and Go Long

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The model says to be long from tomorrow. So I sold my QQQQ put options and bought back the QQQQ stock I had sold short. The underlying QQQQ ...
Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Mutual Funds Improve

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Interesting article about improving performance of mutual funds. I've posted a couple of times about how actively managed funds seem to...
Monday, July 10, 2006

Forecast Update

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Currently my model is projecting Thursday as the turn around day in the market when a new uptrend will start. Of course this can change as w...
Thursday, July 06, 2006

Trading Update

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My trading model automatically stopped me out this morning when QQQQ reached 1.25% down. It then fell further and I went long for a daytrade...
Tuesday, July 04, 2006

June Report

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June 30 is the end of the financial year in Australia and is when mutual funds make distributions including tax credits. Therefore, this mon...
Monday, July 03, 2006

Buffett and Gates

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EI just posted my take on Buffett's donation in response to a poster on the Silicon Investor website: "Why are you so suspicious?...
Sunday, July 02, 2006

Learning to Trade

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Picking stocks isn't easy and neither is learning to trade. This is why most people are better off buying ETFs or mutual funds, dollar ...
Saturday, July 01, 2006

End of June, Finally :)

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A calm day after yesterday. Glad this month is over. I lost money but think I have developed a tool that will make me a lot of money in futu...
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:
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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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