Moomin Valley

Our local Woolworth's store has just introduced self-service checkout machines. I've used these before at Big-W (pictured) and in th...

I got a question on a recent post about our hedge fund investments . I count any fund that uses hedging instead of straight asset class inve...

HFRX shows global hedge funds were more or less flat in October. Convertible arbitrage continued its strong outperformance this year.

This report is based on the available data as a couple of funds as usual won't report till near the end of the month. As usual everythin...

A point I've made in the past is made again in an article on AllAboutAlpha .

An article on what waiters should and mostly shouldn't do. I find the article and comments pretty amusing. The only things that annoy m...

Despite the MSCI World Index losing 1.53% this month, Moominmama gained 1.04%. Part of the gain is due to the decline in the USD (though the...

Interesting discussion in the comments on a Krugman post on retirement income based around this pie chart of income sources of Americans of...

A nice chart from McKinsey of real house prices over the last forty years in a wide range of countries: The UK saw the largest rise in pric...

Preliminary figures from Credit Suisse Tremont show a 2.62% return for hedge funds for September. Macro returns are pretty strong and not ba...

HFRI, which covers a larger sample of hedge funds than HFRX , has come in with a larger gain for September. And unlike HFRX, with the except...

Moominmama's portfolio gained 1.98% this month compared to the 4.62% gain in the MSCI World Index and a 3.73% gain in the S&P 500. T...

This report is based on the available data as a couple of funds as usual won't report till near the end of the month. As usual everythin...

I didn't get as much of a tax refund as I was expecting for two reasons: 1. You can only claim the low income tax offset to the extent ...

In general, those strategies that have been doing well this year, like Convertible Arbitrage, continued to do well and those that haven'...

I got my tax refund credited to my account (amazingly fast) but it's about $A800 less than I was expecting . I'll have to wait for...

I recently commented on leaks from the Australian government's Henry tax review that seemed to be heading in the direction of just grab...

Just got the tax assessment and the amount payable is less than half of what I expected : $A301.45. not payable till 23 November either and ...

My chairman told me today that they'll finally be able to readvertize soon a position that might be relevant to me. The position has bee...

Needless to say almost that I don't like any of these proposals personally except the pay as you drive road tax perhaps and I don'...

I now submitted my tax return and as promised here are all the details. You can compare these numbers to last year's too . The main diff...

This report is based on the available data as a couple of funds as usual won't report till near the end of the month. As usual everythin...

I just did my tax return. It only took 2 1/4 hours because I prepared a spreadsheet last year when I did our first tax returns after returni...

Are 1.68% with a very similar overall picture to HFRI . I'll post more detail with the final numbers.

It's probably hard for my American readers to imagine this is possible . I guess because we missed out on any kind of recession really (...

About a week earlier than normal: They confirm the general picture shown by HFRX but the overall index came in stronger as did many styles ...

First off the blocks HFRX reports a 1.25% gain for hedge funds in August. The distribution across "styles" is pretty similar to th...

I was actually sent a statement by Unisuper yesterday, but the glitches continue . I noticed that my account was about one month behind wher...

More details of the scandal . I'm glad I didn't invest in it.

According to the official data .

It's doing pretty well (in AUD): Most of the gains are savings of course but net profit is now $A1,166. Against the MSCI World Index in ...

Equities, bonds, and hedge finds had positive returns. The MSCI World Index was up 3.62% this month and the S&P 500 seems to have had a ...

As things continued this month to bounce back from the depths of the GFC I thought it was time for an update on how we're performing rel...

After the previous government raised the residency requirement in Australia to 4 years from 2 for those seeking to become Australian citizen...

Following EnoughWealth's suggestion I downloaded OpenOffice. Well, at least it lets me manipulate the shape of the charts in my old Exce...

Good news - the research team that Snork Maiden is part of got some more funding but less than they asked for, so either: 1. They need to fi...

I have found a temporary solution to my Microsoft Excel woes . I moved Excel 2008 into a folder I labeled "disabled applications" ...

Because the equation feature in Word 2004 wasn't entirely compatible with with Macintosh OS 10.5 (some notation appeared incorrectly tho...

I just completed Snork Maiden's tax return. As it is pretty straightforward and I have a spreadsheet set up from last year as well as la...

Time for an update on recent asset class and target portfolio performance: This chart is in USD terms with all investments as they would ap...

The head of the Australian Treasury Department, Ken Henry, said that his tax review will not abolish dividend imputation . Dividend imputati...

HFRI: 2.62% Credit Suisse/Tremont: 2.54%

With all the talk about the supposed negative effects of the "efficient market hypothesis" that supposedly caused the GFC it's...

I just put in a bid to buy 2000 shares in the Challenger Infrastructure Fund (CIF.AX). The annual results came out and they seem OK to good ...

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In the ongoing Everest Financial Saga the next event is the EAIT withdrawal offer. Everest will allow investors to withdraw part of their i...

Snork Maiden and I are complementary in spending attitudes to some degree. I am more "tightwad" and she is more "spendthrift...

I had the meetings with the potential collaborators and they went well though there are no definitive outcomes yet. The first meeting I fou...

Following up on the comments on a recent post things feel a lot different here than in the US.

In the ongoing Everest Financial saga, the "direct investments" in the EAIT fund of hedge funds is being separated out into a stan...

It was a great month. The MSCI World Index gained 8.84% in USD terms and the SPX gained just 7.56%. The Australian Dollar again appreciated ...

I have meetings lined up now to discuss my research and potential for collaboration on grants with a couple of people next week. One of them...

The HRFX gained 1.59% in July. Convertible arbitrage continued to outperform with a more than 6% gain:

Both of Snork Maiden's investment accounts - retirement and non-retirement - are now showing a profit. Given that the former started in ...

So Unisuper finally managed to put me into the accumulation plan (defined contribution) but for some unknown reason 54.51% of the account i...

Had a paper rejected again today - this was the second attempt on this one. The good thing is that they only took 1 1/2 months to reject it,...

July was another great month in the World's stock markets with the MSCI World Index gaining 8.84%. Moominmama gained 4.3% overall with t...

Most Australians seem to hate Canberra and think it is terribly cold. They'd probably be surprised to learn that the average temperature...

Challenger Infrastructure Fund (CIF.AX) announced today that it has closed its foreign currency hedges yielding a profit. As it is now unhed...

I just heard today that the fellowship program I was planning to apply to may not actually run again. If it doesn't I wouldn't be t...

We accidentally bumped into a former colleague who is now a professor in another department at my university while shopping. Actually, this ...

This month is shaping up as another good one with three trading days to go. Several of the funds we invested in in Snork Maiden's Coloni...

When I wrote in yesterday's post that I'd need to have enough cash to buy a house to be happy to do so if my income was very uncerta...

Asked Snork Maiden today (at our current standard of living). If we don't make any big expenditures like buying couches or travelling ...

I've been thinking whether anything needs to be done with Moominmama's portfolio and benchmarked the broad asset allocation against ...

I haven't posted much on investments recently. We're in recovery mode from the GFC and will likely be for a couple of years before m...

Wikinvest have a new finance data platform. It looks pretty nice in terms of graphics etc. though they exaggerate how much this improves thi...

The Australian government http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/alert/0,1001,sid%253D2935%2526cid%253D268500,00.html">hopes to have new foreig...

Final hedge fund returns are now in for the month and they largely confirm the earlier HFRX results . In other words, performance was flat o...

As I commented on the last post, I didn't get the job I interviewed for on Monday in a major Australian city. The chairman already phone...

I'm sitting in the airport terminal on my way back from my interview here today. The process was very traditional on the British model o...

I just got an e-mail inviting me to interview on Monday for the job I applied for last week . This is one of the top departments in the coun...