Moomin Valley

The tax review will finally be released a week from this Sunday . Releasing a report on a Sunday is very weird. If that is meant to bury it,...

Press release from Australia mortgage industry association.

Yeah, another one. Sometime in May. Depending on ranking this is the top department in Australia. I think I need to do a different presentat...

The Sydney Morning Herald is running a series on the Australian residential property market. It looks like it will take a skeptical tone.

We're beginning to make plans to go to Europe this year. Last year we planned but never went. First step is sorting out visa details fo...

So I met with the Director just now. He offered me a backstop one year regular teaching/research position if all three candidates accept the...

Credit Suisse reports similar results to HFRI for March .

So 4 candidates were interviewed for 3 positions here in what I called my "dream job". And 3 offers have gone out but not to me! B...

I've recently done two small consultancies - one for an agency of the Cyprus government and one for a US government agency. The Cyprus p...

The All Ordinaries Index is above 5000 for the first time since the financial crisis!

It was a good month for hedge funds. The HFRX Daily Index reports a 1.38% gain for March. But the HFRI (which includes more funds) reports a...

I have an interview Tuesday in a northern state (there is only one northern state of course :)). They're putting me on a flight leaving ...

How Millennial are You? . I only scored 19%. Which is exactly the expected score for my age (45). Having two blogs and LinkedIn and Facebook...

Very sensible article on home-ownership . Question is how it translates to the Australian context. House prices are extremely high here rela...

I might put some more numbers and charts up at the end of the month when all investments have reported, but here are numbers with some guess...

Moominmama had a positive month with good gains in stocks and commodities. The MSCI World Index rose 6.48% in March and the average equity r...

I've produced a version of the annual accounts in Australian Dollars, which is what we are actually spending in and for the most part e...

While I'm at it, here is finally the income, expenditure, savings report for 2008: I didn't post it last year, as it was just so hor...

I did an annual report for 2009 but skipped the actual income, spending, and saving accounts for the year. So here they are: They follow th...

I switched $A13,750 from our holdings of Colonial First State Geared Share Fund to the CFS Conservative Fund in my CFS Superannuation accoun...

The chairman just wanted to update me on the state of the job search. It'll be another two weeks till they can make a decision... I did...

These reports are now going to come about a month after the close of the month, because only then do we have reports from all funds. As usua...

I submitted the final report for the project I did over the past year today, though I'll need to edit down the paper a lot to submit it ...

This isn't our car, just the closest picture I could find on the web Some time between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning someone sma...

The interview went OK. One of the committee told me I did well on the formal panel interview section. I didn't crash and burn or anythin...

I was commenting last time that when it rains it pours . Yeah, well the people who asked me to submit my details in order to maybe spend 40...

It looks like this will happen following a meeting and e-mails today. It's nominally about AUD 20k in funding. As I'm fending off o...

Another interview coming up on Monday. I just heard this evening. This one is pretty much my dream job. Hopefully, I don't screw it up l...

Results are now in for both Credit Suisse/Tremont and HFRI. HFRI gained 0.52% (HFRX monthly 0.26%) and Credit Suisse/Tremont 0.68%. Managed ...

The Australian government is nominating me as a candidate for participation in an international research organization in my field. Of course...

Some insights about class . In attitudes and circumstances I think I am on the border between the middle class and owning class. I try to be...

Always the first of the hedge fund indices to report, the HFRX daily index reports a gain of 0.26% for February. January saw a loss of 0.02%...

I gave a presentation at a government department today, which they seemed to like and then the possibility of me being "seconded" ...

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.