Moomin Valley

I finally got the accounts together for January (accounts in USD): Our spending was again at the low end. February is going to come in aroun...

Moominmama lost 1.82% in February, mainly due to the fall in Sterling against the US Dollar. The value of Sterling Cash fell 4.81%, while bo...

As this period of receiving two salaries comes to a close, I'm reviewing how our saving vs. spending has been during the last year. Curr...

My current contract ends today more or less, paywise. I still haven't actually completed what I agreed to do, but it will be done in the...

Moomin Valley is one of the finalists in the category of "Best Economics Blog" for the http://www.plutusawards.com/congratulations...

Today was the grant application deadline . Realistically, I knew I wasn't going to be able to come up with the matching funding I needed...

I came into the office this morning after working at home yesterday and found that a ceiling fan had been installed. This building is 50 yea...

Credit Suisse Tremont show a 0.17% gain for hedge funds in January. And in further contrast to HFRI's numbers they show Global Macro re...

You've probably heard about Amy Bishop who shot three faculty members at the University of Albama in Huntsville after she was denied ten...

HFRI reports a 0.71% loss for hedge funds globally in January 2010 while HFRX reported a 0.02% loss. By contrast, stock indices were down by...

After I put a lot of work into developing a grant application to try to create a position for myself (as well as applying for regular jobs) ...

Moominmama suffered a loss of 0.96% in January following a similar loss in December. This month, though, the MSCI All Country Gross World In...

Sirius Resources (SIR.AX) is going to automatically sell out all shareholders with less than $A500 worth of shares free of brokerage and sen...

Monthly performance figures for December and annual figures for 2009 are now in for the HFRX monthly indices: The Global Hedge Fund Index r...

Not long after I commented that the TFS Market Neutral Fund was at an all time high the fund has decided to institute a "hard close...

Following a breakdown of the sources of growth in net worth , we look at changes in asset allocation over the year: This first chart tracks ...

The Global Hedge Fund Index rose 0.55% in December and 13.40% for 2009. Performance over the last 3 or 4 years is negative. The MSCI All Cou...

It's weird that "signature debit" dominates the US debit card market - at least according to the New York Times. I don't ...

This chart shows that the rebound from the lows in early 2009 in our net worth is due to a combination of new savings and investment gains....

Net worth rebounded very substantially from the beginning of the year and the low early in the year: Medium term balance is the net of all n...

Moxy Vote is a new website (got started in November) which aims to link individual investors and advocates in order to get more individual ...

The first part of my 2009 annual report focuses on rate of return relative to benchmarks. Here are the annualized rates of return: As the Au...

There'll be an annual report coming up soon with lots of charts, but for now, let's look at December. As usual everything is in US D...

As I've written before we don't have an "emergency fund" as such, but we do have plenty of savings outside of superannuat...

Median house prices in Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida have fallen to USD 92k . Many metro areas across the state have medians around USD 150...

The US Dollar rose this month depressing returns in USD terms for globally diversified portfolios. As a result Moominmama lost 0.95% this mo...

At the end of 1999 my net worth was $A141k or $US87k. Today our net worth is around $US415k or $A470k. Is that good or bad? The growth rate ...

I just saw an Ibis walking around in the street. I don't remember ever seeing one of those in Canberra before.

On 8th December the Australian Government finally paid $A1,500 into my superannuation account as their "co-contribution" alongsid...

At least one of my investments is at an all time high (when you include reinvested dividends). I have gained 27.6% since first investing in...

Somewhat unusually I stayed in my home country the whole year (but it is almost a whole continent :)), but I did get to take these trips out...

I have a couple of prospectuses here for investments in Australian "hedge funds" but I think I will skip both: Platinum Capital Sh...

Credit Suisse/Tremont are reporting preliminary results that are a little stronger than both HFRI and HFRX . The overall index is estimated...

The results are more positive than the HFRX returns . Even convertible arbitrage showed a positive return in this larger sample.

An update on the performance of my Mom's investment in an Aletheia fund. I have monthly data now from June 2008 to November 2009. Not a...

As usual everything is in US Dollars unless otherwise stated. After stock market declines in October, November again saw gains in world stoc...

Long time readers will notice that I'm posting much less on this blog than in the past. That's because I am focusing on my academic ...

The HFRX global hedge fund index gained 1.66% in November. Most styles gained this month but there was a tendency for styles that have lagge...

Another good month in which the MSCI World Index rose by 4.16%. Somewhat surprising given the negativity that seemed to be in the news for m...

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...