Moomin Valley

Personal Finance, Investing, and Economics

Monday, June 30, 2008

"Gurus" Lose Even More Money

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Interesting league table of returns of "gurus" over the last 6 and 12 months. I estimate I'm down 10% over six months and 5% ...
Saturday, June 28, 2008

Worst Since the Great Depression

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There is a lot of talk that this is the worst June for the Dow since the Great Depression and the worst month since the 2000-02 bear market....
Friday, June 20, 2008

Three Bad Trades: Two (?) Down, One to Go

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Last week I was in three bad trades on each of which I was down significantly. One was long NASDAQ futures, another short QQQQ puts, and th...
2 comments:
Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Macquarie Capital Alliance Group to be Privatised

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Another Macquarie private equity listed fund to be delisted . This bodes well for my various Australian listed funds that are trading at hu...
Monday, June 16, 2008

Another similarity with 1990-91

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Record levels of bearishness. As I write, oil just spiked to a new all time high. Seems to me this was a reaction to a bad Empire State Rep...
Sunday, June 15, 2008

Mid-Month Update

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The numbers in the right column look really awful. The only goal where we're making progress at this point in the month is on realized g...
3 comments:
Saturday, June 14, 2008

Immigration

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Another goal completed, Friday, when we visited the Department of Immigration in Canberra to turn in Snork Maiden's immigration applicat...
1 comment:
Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Australian Stock Market Update

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The chart shows progress so far since all time highs in the Australian stock market at the end of October. A suggested Elliott Wave count co...
Wednesday, June 04, 2008

New Investment: Legend International

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Legend International is a company run by Joseph Gutnick that is developing a major phosphate mine in northwest Queensland. The stock is an ...

Asynchronous Diagonal Put Spread Trading

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I'm now at the second stage in my new U.S. based options trading strategy. I'm trading QQQQ options at the moment. I'm short 4 J...
Monday, June 02, 2008

May 2008 Report

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A good month, though returns were not as spectacular as in April. Mid month, investment returns were more than double what they were by the ...

New Trading Goal for 2008

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I'm upping my trading goal for 2008 from $9,500 to $15,000. This means making about $2000 per month for the rest of the year except in t...
2 comments:
Saturday, May 31, 2008

May Trading Results

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May was another generally positive month for trading. Realised gains came in at $1,600 ($3,674 ytd): It's feeling like this kind of rate...
Friday, May 30, 2008

Sold Out of Safety Insurance

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Sold my holding in SAFT. Held since August last year, received a few dividends watched the stock price go up, but though the company is chea...
2 comments:
Thursday, May 29, 2008

Why Doesn't Australia Give More Incentives to Give to Charity?

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We made some donations to help with the recovery from the Sichuan Earthquake. Half the money we gave through San Diego Zoo to help the Wolo...
4 comments:
Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Where Does BHP Make Its Money?

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Today the price of oil is falling and though the U.S. stockmarket rose overnight the Australian stock market is down. Resource stocks are, o...
Tuesday, May 27, 2008

First CFD Daytrade

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I completed my first CFD day trade for a profit of $1. Moving stops is not as fast as on Interactive Brokers as you need to click a confirm ...
Monday, May 26, 2008

First CFD Trade

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My account was approved this morning and I got some money into my account - using a credit card it was there right away - more is on the way...

Trading, Tax and Superannuation

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Gradually, I'm getting up to speed on Australian taxation, retirement etc. A combination of reading the Australian Financial Review (hor...
2 comments:
Sunday, May 25, 2008

Listed vs. Unlisted Property

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Listed property includes REITs and other companies mainly involved in property that are listed on stockmarkets such as Westfield. Unlisted p...
Friday, May 23, 2008

How Does the American Economic Association Invest?

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The American Economic Association (the World's top academic economics society) has an $18 million dollar potfolio . They're currentl...
2 comments:

Market Inefficiency

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Challenger Infrastructure Fund is down 22% today currently. Yesterday they reported that they sold their holding of Arqiva and ceased takeo...
Thursday, May 22, 2008

City Index Seminar

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I just got back from the City Index seminar . I was pretty impressed. The trading platform looks nice a lot of features similar to Interacti...

Challenger Infrastructure Fund Update

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The Challenger Infrastructure Fund announced that it sold its interests in Arqiva - a British provider of broadcasting infrastructure - an...

Are Financial Economists Seeing the Light on Technical Analysis?

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Readers might be familiar with the following quotation from Burton Malkiel ( A Random Walk Down Wall Street , 1996, p. 154): “technical stra...

Pullback in Progress

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It's unusual to have more than two big down days in the US market recently without some sideways or slightly up action. So expect smalle...
Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Bekaert

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Bekaert has returned 35% since bought on 17 January . The price is close to analysts' targets and as I blogged earlier there may be so...

Sometimes it's Worth Paying for a Good Product

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We just bought an office chair for use at home. A few months ago I ended up with an inflamed sciatic nerve from sitting on a poorly designe...

Market Update

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It's quite likely that the wave that started in the March lows is complete and we are now in a down wave. One reason that this might not...
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Potential Changes (Yet Again) to Superannuation

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Gottliebson has some interesting insights on the upcoming Australian tax review. I think it makes sense that "salary sacrificing"...
2 comments:

Funding a CFD Account

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I haven't opened a CFD account yet but am thinking about where the money is going to come from. $2000 would be enough to get started wi...
Monday, May 19, 2008

Research on CFD Providers

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Man Financial was voted the best CFD provider in Australia but only seems to offer CFDs on individual shares. So I can't use that. CMC ...
4 comments:
Sunday, May 18, 2008

City Index

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Here's another idea in my ongoing quest to trade stock indices cheaply, in small size, and at times which are convenient for my time zon...
Friday, May 16, 2008

Demi-Millionaire

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On an intraday basis, we just went over a half million U.S. Dollars in net worth ($US503k or $A535k). Hopefully, we can hold onto it. We are...
Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Recovered from the Credit Crunch

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As of today our total return index (US term) or accumulation index (Aus speak) hit a new all time high, at least when measured in US Dollars...

Traded My First Futures Option

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Strange how there are still new instruments for me to try trading :) I traded my first futures option - deliberately throwing away $A22.50 t...

Beazer & Budget

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Beazer Homes finally released their earnings for September 2007... They still have two quarters to release. I bought some puts again. This ...
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Interactive Brokers "Improves" Trader Workstation

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The latest version of Trader Workstation - Interactive Brokers trading software - has a new look - I don't really like it, but there see...

Livermore and Niederhoffer

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While on the topic of book reviews and risk, I recently read "The Education of a Speculator", Victor Niederhoffer's autobiogr...

MVC Capital

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I added MVC Capital to the private equity category. Also added to Newcastle Investments after they released their earnings and again bough...
Monday, May 12, 2008

Using Options to Reduce Leverage

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Most people think of options as a way of increasing leverage. You can put down a small amount of money to control a large amount of stock. B...
1 comment:
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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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