Moomin Valley

Glitzer asked me a little while ago to simulate a China oriented portfolio diversified with the Man-AHL managed futures fund. She specifie...

Moominmama gained 9.21% for the month. The MSCI World Index was up 10.08%. Both gains were in large part due to the fall in the US Dollar ov...

Now all the unlisted fund returns are in for April I can present the final performance numbers. Australian Large Cap stocks, mainly via the ...

This article from the Wall Street Journal seems pretty solid. Let me know if you can see any flaws. The bottom line is that you shouldn...

If you've been around the investment blogosphere for a while, you've probably come across the writings of George Friedman, CEO of St...

The Snorkparents finally left on Friday morning. We had to wake up at 4am to take them to the airport. Since then we have been reorganizing ...

From 1st June, Commonwealth Securities will introduce margin lending rules that allow more borrowing against securities for more diversifie...

There is already more information available on the web (e.g. http://www.exfin.com/australian-budget-2009">here and here ) about the...

The recent Australian federal budget announced changes to arrangements for health insurance and superannuation. The former surprised me beca...

HFRI returned 3.74% for April while Credit Suisse/Tremont estimate that hedge funds only gained 1.68% which is very close to the HFRX estima...

Apparently, the Australian federal budget announced on Tuesday repeals the Foreign Investment Fund (FIF) rules which apply to investments i...

My membership certificate and other info finally arrived from my new superannuation fund, Unisuper . They completely ignored all the choices...

Got back last night from our trip to Port Douglas in Northern Queensland with the Snorkparents. Yes, we did see two cassowaries just like ...

The HFRX is reporting a gain of 1.61% for April. Equity market neutral and macro strategies lost money while convertible arbitrage did well....

Our currency allocation is getting really out of whack as the Australian Dollar rises and Australian shares perform well and we spend USD. W...

This month saw one of the largest gains in net worth in dollar terms USD 31,220 (second biggest after April 2008) and was the biggest percen...

I'm just checking all our bank accounts, credit cards, and loans at the end of the month to record the data in my monthly accounting exe...

Moominmama gained 3.91% for the month. Pretty nice, though not much compared to the MSCI World stock index . Brazilian stocks did very well,...

In USD terms. Currently I have us up 12.65% in USD terms and 6.62% in AUD terms - likely that the final numbers could be slightly higher - S...

Checking our bank accounts in preparation for the monthly report I noticed a discrepancy in the numbers and realised that our $A900 stimulus...

Finally. It's two months worth of pay. I paid off the credit card bill which was around $A3,800. Now we have $A6,000 worth of borrowing ...

As promised this post looks at the performance of our target portfolio from the perspective of an Australian investor. As I did in a post i...

Now all the unlisted fund returns are in for March I can present the final performance numbers. Australian Large Cap stocks, mainly via the ...

This post follows up with the performance in the last 4 month of the asset classes I discussed in the context of endowment style portfolios ...

A phenomenon we've encountered in Australia but didn't see in the United States is discount department stores that give a lower pric...

U.S. High School "Advanced Placement Economics Test courtesy of the New York Times. I got 18/18 but for a couple of questions that was...

As there is so little in both my US brokerage accounts, I can't see much sense in keeping both open. Though Interactive Brokers charges ...

I sold some shares in Platinum Capital (PMC.AX) to bring my allocation to the fund back under 5% of net assets and the gross asset allocatio...

The table shows our total automatic saving on a monthly basis. Unisuper and PSS(AP) are superannuation funds - the Australian equivalent of...

Credit Suisse/Tremont have lowered their estimate of hedge fund returns for March to 0.68%. HFRX have not changed their estimate from -0.03...

In this final post in this series I'm going to look at the investment choice in my super fund. You can either choose a preset mix of a...

I've run a few different scenarios to work out whether I should go for the defined benefit or defined contribution option. Scenario 1: W...

The major decision I need to make in response to receiving my job contract is which type of superannuation (retirement) scheme to join. Yes...

According to an article in the Australia the Treasury Department says that the average wealth of Australians fell from $A249,000 in 2007 to...

I finally got my contract today. Last night on Snork Maiden's insistence I sent another e-mail to human resources and my supervisor imme...

My paper was accepted for the Venice meeting. But as I mentioned , I can't use project funding for the trip. Registration would be E450 ...

Last night, Snork Maiden and I booked a trip to Port Douglas (about one hour's drive north of Cairns in Northern Queensland) for us and ...

The answer to my question: "Can I use project funds to go to Europe" is "No". So I just wrote to the conference organiz...

With 55% of funds reporting Credit Suisse/Tremont estimate that hedge funds gained 0.86% on average in March. It's better than HFR's...

A Black Swan in Canberra Nicholas Taleb has http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11de-996a-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1">an ...

We gained this month and so did the markets and we beat the market again. The following is based on the available data as a couple of funds ...

The HFRX index is showing a 0.03% decline for March while stock indices rose more than 8% globally for the month. But a lot of the componen...

The returns for each asset class are also net of any movements in currencies. Losses have been adjusted up a bit since the close of the mont...

Snork Maiden finally saw a gain in her non-retirement investments this month after six losing months in a row. The gain was only $A332 or 3....

My paper about my funded research project was rejected by one of the two conference organizers in Europe I submitted papers to. They accepte...

From the press release: AEP ANNOUNCES PROGRAM TO MAXIMISE SHAREHOLDER VALUE: • $60 million pro-rata return of capital proposed • Continuatio...

This guy has almost the same rationale as I did for joining LinkedIn - getting more visibility for your own website (and yourself). The sam...

I got the 16GB version of the Sandisk Cruzer USB Flash Drive in JB Hi Fi for $A75. The local Apple reseller only had one rather ugly small...

The table shows Moominmama's performance in March. The MSCI World Index gained 8.29% and the S&P 500 8.76% (total return). But Moomi...

I just got an e-mail about a new social media things called Academia.edu . The organizers state: "Academia.edu was founded by Richard P...

Finally today I got the key to my office and Snork Maiden and I moved some of my books and files in there this evening. My computer should b...

Continuing the http://moominhouse.blogspot.com/2009/03/2006-7-income-and-tax-for-act-and.html">series on income and tax in the ACT a...

Most of last week we were on a trip to Sydney together with the "Snorkparents". The picture is the view from Watson's Bay of t...

Following up on Friday's post I've calculated the per capita breakdown of different income sources for all ACT postcodes and Austra...

The annual report on Australian tax collections has just been published by the ATO. It's just crazy that "the vast majority of peop...

The final Credit Suisse/Tremont numbers are in for February with the index losing 0.88%. In a replay of the Madoff scandal , equity market ...

Snork-Maiden somehow convinced her employer to buy this book for their library :) I have mixed reactions. It's not one of these books th...