Moomin Valley

The finance person in my former department told me yesterday they want my laptop back (not sure what they plan on doing with a Mac laptop in...

Kept the Beazer puts though. Thought about putting a hedge on the US portfolio (BRKB, FLIP, HCBK, IBKR, NCT, RICK, SAFT) for the rest of the...

Today was a great day for being a bear. However, I closed all my index shorts towards the end of the day. The market closed at the low of th...

Today is the first day of the semester at my former university. I'm glad I don't have to teach today. Maybe some day I'll come b...

I just sold my 500 shares of Ansell @$A12.59. The stock spiked up 4-5% today and I'd been wondering recently whether to hold onto it. S...

Every time I "blow up" I get to work on both my model and my psychology. I try to find tweaks to the model that would have given m...

I seem to have developed something like a death wish regarding my trading accounts. I know exactly what to do, and then do the exact opposit...

I hadn't used it at all for a while and think a credit line on my remaining US credit card accounts of $10,500 is perfectly adequate. So...

Shorted 100 LEH (Lehman) @ 58.99. Don't know how long I'll hold this one, will see how things develop. PS 12:38PM Another new one: B...

Snork Maiden advertised her car on Craigslist at 4pm this afternoon and by 6pm she had a buyer! And this is for a ten year old Subaru in a s...

Today I did a final clear-up at my old office - erasing all my files off the computer, taking a bunch of files that were still there home, a...

Following up from yesterday's post I downloaded data on the Australian consumer price index and computed series for real (inflation adj...

I put together this chart of house prices for the six Australian State Capitals and Canberra from the official government data: There is als...

The autopsy of the quant fund meltdown in the last weeks is beginning . In this article, Clifford Asness of AQR is quoted as saying: “We hav...

The Fed made a "surprise" cut in the discount rate - the rate it lends to banks at - of 1/2 percent this morning. The stock future...

I decided to leave my 403b account with my employer and invested in TIAA-CREF. Often I read about how this is a bad idea. But TIAA-CREF is a...

The "carry trade" is where investors borrow in low interest currencies and invest in currencies with high interest rates, pocketin...

The model was signalling to go long tomorrow. However, today is Wednesday which tends to be an up day in the markets. I was just searching f...

The ACCC (Australian Competition Commission) approved the merger of Symbion Health (SYB.AX) and Healthscope (HSP.AX) today. Yet Symbion'...

I got my tourist visa or rather "visa waiver" and am back in the US in Snork Maiden's town. They asked me a lot of questions a...

I'm in Montreal. I took the Greyhound Bus up from Burlington, VT this afternoon. I told the Canadian Immigration agent the whole story -...

I just now e-mailed in a new resignation letter with a resignation date of 13th August. I also e-mailed HR to ask if there is anything I ne...

The HR Department at my university won't approve my leave due to concern that immigration will take a "dim view" of it. The he...

I'm not the only one who thinks this investment is a bargain: 7 August 2007 ASX RELEASE Everest Babcock & Brown Alternative Inves...

I bought one share of Berkshire Hathaway B (BRKB) @ $3615 and one hundred of Safety Insurance (SAFT) @ $33.26. I thought that Berkshire had ...

Just bought another 2000 units of EBI - the listed Australian fund of hedge funds - at $A2.92. Today the manager announced that NAV for the ...

Mortgage borrowing conditions are getting much tougher and interest rates, especially for large mortgages, seem to be going up. An interesti...

In the first three days of this month the NDX is down 0.7% and my trading accounts down1.1%. The model is up 0.52% because it would have sto...

I'm still trying too hard to make money and end up geting into lower probability trades with too large a position and losing. This week ...

Anything that might be a hedge fund, mortgage fund, or have leverage is getting sold. In some cases this is somewhat rational. Case in point...

This is my best guess of how to interpret what has happened so far in the SPX and what might happen next, based on my idea that the correct...

This is my net worth and investment performance report for July. All figures are in US Dollars unless otherwise stated. This month saw the f...

I lost $3067 in trading in my US accounts. That's 13.61% of the capital allocated to trading. That's the second worst performance si...

I was doing well trading this morning and was up about $400 and then for some dumb reason tried to trade again this afternoon. Things went c...

I fixed the damage caused to my futures account on Friday and then some. HIgh volatility in today's session was very useful for this pur...

It was a very bad idea to put so much reliance on an essentially untested or minimally tested model. The progress in winning back some profi...

Just thought of a new way of using my model results and so am going to make a bold prediction for tomorrow. Direction: Up Predicted rise in ...

I moved back to the US from Australia and now we are on the verge of moving back to Australia again. I produced a NetWorthIQ style snapshot ...

But Oscar was calling for an up day too, so I wasn't the only one. I made some money on the long side and then just when I realized tha...

Following up from my recent posts I thought it would be useful to write down a simple equation that really sums up a lot about the decision ...

Maybe I should add this to my model? That is a huge effect not to be arbitraged away already. Weird.

I plugged the actual numbers for our own situation into my housing simulator. These include a 7% mortgage rate current in Australia, Snork M...

It seems to me that the best way to address the financial aspects of the renting vs. buying conundrum is to use simulations. There are too m...

My new trading strategy is to hold a minimal or small position overnight (currently equivalent to 1100 QQQQ shares) and to increase my posit...

There are two main ways that an international move of this sort should affect investment choices: 1. Differences in tax policy - I don't...

A very good article on buying vs. renting.

Is a famous saying of Warren Buffett. Actually, it's OK to lose money as long as you don't lose too much. To illustrate this point I...

I just agreed with a moving company to go ahead for an August 3rd pickup of my stuff. The cost: $4175 including insurance against loss for d...

Today was meant to be a big trading day with lots of news releases, the FOMC minutes, and Google earnings. But I didn't sleep last night...

Corey linked to this interesting Applet . It seems to have some built in assumption about the variance of the amount won or lost. Plug in W...

The naive thinking in this kind of article is just poor economics. It's the way most people think though. Yes it's true that the ho...

Big down day in the market and I still manage to lose money going long... what is wrong with me? First two trades went OK but the third lost...

Did my first actual trade of the Australian Share Price Index Futures. Using my Interactive Brokers account and trading on the Sydney Future...

I tried applying the same model I am using for trading the NASDAQ 100 to the All Ordinaries and S&P 500. The results were very poor for ...

Been taking another look at Australian real estate sites for our desired location. We should be able to pay $A350-$A450 per week in rent ($U...

My first two weeks as a supposedly professional trader (as I'm no longer earning a salary) are not going well. I've lost $3800 or 16...

today, which is great news. So I am effectively already on unpaid leave from my job. I went to the local immigration office this morning. Lu...

Just faxed this letter to Sydney. Hope it does the trick. There is no point in pursuing a green card if I don't intend to stay in the US...

I finally have the data together in almost final form to be able to present to you my net worth and investment performance report for June. ...

We were going to spend yesterday on packing, dealing with Snork Maiden's visa issues and then maybe getting around to some work on her P...

Anyway, yesterday, Snork Maiden finally got her visa application lodged for her work permit (457 Business Visa) for Australia. Her employer ...