Moomin Valley

We got into our apartment today, spent a huge amount of money on appliances, furniture, etc. and got the phone and internet running. The las...

Met up with a second friend (T) last night. He brought with him all my mail - I've been using his address as my address in Australia unt...

My friend sent me an e-mail today. He starts: "this isn't meant to put any more pressure on you".... "but we have a tempo...

Yesterday lunchtime, we met with one of my friends here at the "Labor Club". In the "old days" we used to hang out at th...

After the first week here we are beginning to be able to relax a little. We saw Parliament House, Floriade (and annual Spring flower festiv...

It is easy to be optimistic about your financial situation when you are looking at projections of future finances. Well, as long as that is ...

We got all our utilities ordered, though to actually get phone/internet service a guy needs to come out to the unit. Likely we won't hav...

We signed the lease on an apartment yesterday but can't move in till next Friday. They approved our application without even apparently ...

We looked at 4 apartments today ranging in rent from $A290 to $A450 per week. We only looked at the $A290 one to see what you could get for ...

Today we saw one apartment and one house. The apartment was in a brand new luxury building. Rent $A450 per week ($US1666 per month). It was ...

We rented a car to help with our first week of looking for somewhere to live. Snork Maiden's first experience of driving on the lefthand...

Once I told my father's cousin-in-law (is there such a relationship?) in Israel that I liked to visit stores when I travel and see what ...

For me it is a very familiar country. But Snork Maiden hasn't been here before. Both of us have done this before - move to a country on ...

Today is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. It is traditionally the day the world was created. I know this is far from a traditional way to ...

At least I can say I followed the model today more or less. But I still lost money. Looking back at the last 2 1/2 months I lost $3140 in Ju...

Everything is ready, only final preparations to go. Now I feel like the countdown for one of those moon or shuttle missions is on :)

This evening (US time still) was the shareholder meeting to approve, or as it turns out reject the Symbion Health-Healthscope merger scheme ...

Snork Maiden got the e-mail this morning granting her Australia visa. But it said that the visa needs to be "evidenced" at the Aus...

This isn't a regular feature of any sort, just an update on my trading one week into the month. The model is still short but I closed al...

Just read a very interesting paper in the American Economic Review ( here is an earlier version). The author demonstrates that the average ...

Poor bears . I'm still suffering from bearish wishful thinking.

This table which I derived from a spreadsheet I downloaded from the IRS website * contains stunning data. You have probably heard that most ...

All figures are in US Dollars unless otherwise stated. This month again saw negative investment performance in USD terms, though this was d...

Here's a more serious post :) Following on from the "merger" I am updating the beneficiaries on my retirement accounts. This ...

The merger of Moomin Valley and Snorkdale was announced today. In a stock for stock transaction, Moomin Valley, as the larger of the two ent...

Snork Maiden a.k.a. Yoyo successfully defended her PhD dissertation on Friday. You can read all about it here .

I gained $1028 in trading in my US accounts. That's 5.6% of the capital allocated to trading. The month started well and then things go...

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...