Moomin Valley

Barrons' has updated the portfolio allocations for Yale, Princeton, and the average US educational endowment: Compare these to a previo...

The table is from a paper by Richard Disney presented at a conference on taxation held as part of the Australian tax policy inquiry. It sho...

Today, after much searching, we finally bought a couple of couches - a two and a three seater. Yes, they are leather but not the ones in the...

I haven't heard back from the headhunter so I guess I wasn't shortlisted for an on-campus interview. The department I interviewed a...

My opinion of him and Stratfor sank even lower .

An interesting article about changes in the ways people are signalling status - a switch from conspicuous consumption of material goods to ...

The TFS Market Neutral Fund which I've often blogged about and am invested in, is closing to new investors. The fund's assets stand...

HFRI came in with a 5.58% return for May - one and a half percentage points more than Credit Suisse's estimate - and positive returns f...

So I went out to the airport today to meet the partner of the recruitment firm at the Qantas Club (=Lounge). I think the interview went well...

Credit Suisse/Tremont hedge fund indices have now reported for May. They are reporting a 4.06% gain for the month, which they say is the bes...

I bought a suit for my interview today . Only the second suit I've ever bought. We went to Myer because there are sales on. But the suit...

A couple of nights ago it hit -6C here in Canberra which is near the coldest I've seen here (-7C). The record low for Canberra is -10C. ...

The phone interview with the headhunter went well. It started with me asking questions about what the job really is. He said that they basic...

I've been preparing for my phone interview with the headhunter tomorrow morning. I'm not sure what to expect as I've always been...

I heard yesterday about a position in a government department here doing more or less on the public policy side what I do in academic resear...

I finally worked out the fault in my accounts: a minus sign instead of a plus sign in front of the gain for Platinum Capital for the month! ...

We also visited the area of the planned Tianjin Eco-City on our trip to China last year . We saw even less of the site than these guys did....

I just bought 5000 shares in AOD.AX at $A1.10 a share. This used about half my available margin. The fund is not marginable with CommSec. I...

The news is coming thick and fast this morning. Croesus Mining is to be renamed Sirius Resources and become a base metal explorer rather th...

IPE , a private equity fund of funds listed on the Australian Stock Exchange placed around 6 million new shares with a fund manager for 19 c...

Commonwealth Securities are offering up to $A500 of free buy trades on a CommSec margin loan if you make the purchases before 30th June. Th...

So I spoke with the "senior associate" from the headhunting firm that contacted me yesterday. She tried to downplay the rather amb...

HFRX - Hedge Fund Research's daily hedge fund indices based on a small sample of funds - was up 3.15% for May. By comparison, MSCI World...

I got a call from a "headhunter" today. That's a first for me, I think. The position is a full professor at an Australian Univ...

I wrote a very short review of "The Black Swan" a little while ago. Here is a good but very long review of Nicholas Nassim Taleb ...

Another two weeks on and Unisuper still haven't transferred me to the defined contribution scheme. Will I need to send in the form agai...

Business Week has a list of the most expensive U.S. suburbs in each state . What's stunning from an Australian perspective is that in ma...

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 ...