Moomin Valley

This month, stock markets fell sharply and the USD rose sharply. The MSCI World Index fell 8.88% and the S&P 500 6.01%. The Australian D...

Everything lost money in USD terms because both stock markets were down globally and the US Dollar strengthened a lot this month as you can ...

It stands at $A99,773 up from $A92,038 at the end of April. I now realize that we need to get to way over $100k. More financial reports for ...

Life is very busy recently and so I don't have much time to blog. I haven't even posted much on my professional blog. There hasn...

We went to the auction today for this house . This is the first house we actually saw sell at auction - only the second auction we've be...

The lender phoned me this morning. We could borrow up to $690k for a house with a price up to $750k. This is because the stamp duty is abou...

Back in February, we met with a mortgage lender at Commonwealth Bank. He told us that we need to have a reasonable sized deposit on deposit...

As usual, everything is expressed in US Dollars unless indicated. This month exchange rates were relatively stable for a change and investme...

The US has a particularly punitive tax regime on individuals. Not only are they taxed on their worldwide income but even if they move abroad...

So the government will increase the superannuation contributions tax to 30% but only for people who earn more than $300k per year. This is ...

that Google is defying the trend to smaller screens .

Here in Australia we are now in the run-up to the annual federal government budget announcement. All kinds of ideas that might be in the bud...

We continue looking at houses ... As we look more we gradually understand better what we are looking for. Houses vary a lot in location, age...

A lot of Australian closed end funds - known as listed investment companies in Australian jargon - have been trading well below net asset va...

As usual, everything is expressed in US Dollars unless indicated: Spending this month included a hotel bill that has since been refunded. Wi...

Doing the accounts for March this morning... Looks like we hit a net worth of $A600k for the first time, partly because of the fall in the A...

The numbers are mostly in now. As usual, everything is expressed in US Dollars unless indicated. February managed to squeeze in three pay ch...

The US has the Case-Shiller indexes and now Australia has a potentially tradeable house price index too.

More data than usual is delayed this month so I'm planning to wait to report fully when I have a bit more. As you can see from NetWorthI...

A respectable rate of return and most asset classes did well with the USD falling a little against Sterling and Euros. The MSCI World Index ...

We finally have managed to get a UK national savings certificate worth about £40k that was in my father's name only transferred to my m...

She had the interview about four weeks ago but had to wait till today to get confirmation that her position which was a temporary one has be...

Today we went to meet with a mortgage lender. We didn't get far though. I thought I would be OK that I had easily accessible money in ma...

Sydney is the 7th most expensive city in the world to live in and 50% more expensive than New York. As Melbourne is 8th, I'm sure Canbe...

If the stock markets do well, the Australian Dollar stays high, and we don't buy a house we might hit $US800k this year... Buying a hous...

So we (Snork Maiden and me) went into a Commonwealth Bank branch and talked to the person at the customer service desk about getting pre-app...

I'm planning a trip next month to a neighboring country and just realized I will hit 1 million kilometres of flying during my flight the...

This graph explains our sudden interest in the housing market. It shows monthly saving in Australian Dollars outside of retirement accounts ...

As usual, this much more conservative portfolio returned less than the stock market or the Moominvalley portfolio . And with dissaving rathe...

This was a good month with decent market returns, a relief after a year where most months we were losing money. The big news is that we hit ...

We went to our first home auction today . There was a big crowd but in the end only 4 people seem to have registered to bid in the auction. ...

The last couple of weekends we have been to open houses in neighborhoods we might like to live in. I think the nicest house we've seen i...

Unisuper say they are concerned that the Australian government will not index the concessional superannuation limit this year. The issue is...

Back in 2008 I blogged about traditional Australian Listed Investment Companies . These have lower management fees than Australian index fun...

This is what happened to asset allocation over the year: Cash and bonds went up and large cap Australian stocks went down. This is due to ma...

Not sure how serious this annual review is going to be. I'm just going to post what I feel like. This is what happened to net worth in A...

I got an e-mail from HSBC in India today telling em to phone a US number because my debit card may have been used fraudulently. I did a Goog...

So we were in Dick Smith (electronics store) about to buy something that costs $A250. Snork Maiden asked the cashier if any deals were avail...

It was a big year careerwise. I got a permanent job in Australia after working temporarily for the same department between January and Augu...

I'll do an annual review soon, so this will be pretty brief. As usual the numbers are in US Dollars. Non-investment income was on the hi...

Happy new year! Hopefully, this year will be better than the last. For US investors things weren't so bad but the Australian stock marke...

Third post in this series : 1996-2002: 2007-Present: The most noticeable thing about these pictures I think is the sunshine :) It's not ...

Street scenes from the other side of the ocean: 1990-1991: 1991-1992: 1992-1993: 1995-1996: 2002-2007: Yes, when I was in grad school I end...

I was inspired by these posts to put up some pictures of places I used to live. The difference in my case is that they all look much the sa...

I haven't done this kind of thing for a while :) Looking at the Qantas chart there is a clear resistance line at $1.80. TA theory would ...

And back down again this month. The portfolio was heavily affected by the rise in the US Dollar reducing the value of non-USD assets in USD ...

Things reversed again this month but the losses were actually less than I expected. IN USD terms we lost 6.35%. In AUD terms we lost 3.05% a...

With potentially large expenditures in the next year or two we need to have more liquidity. So going forward I'm going to focus discreti...

It looks like the chairman and a bunch of other directors of Qantas went out and bought shares on the market. It's nice to see a vote of...

I saw an ad in the Australian Financial Review today to invest in the US Masters Residential Property Fund . I already invest in US property...

A reader asks the Sydney Morning Herald : "Q The money that an employer ''compulsorily contributes'' to my super * come...

If you ever have to do a security clearance - at least in this country - these are some of the things you'll need: 1. Everywhere you eve...

The Vice Chancellor (i.e. President) of the University of Queensland is resigning . But what shocked me in the story was that he was paid ov...

When measured in terms of median wealth per individual in US Dollars at $220,000. Switzerland is richest in terms of mean wealth per individ...

Yes our rate of return in USD was 15.01% for October which is a record. But it was largely due to the rebound in the Australian Dollar. In A...

Finally a positive month... The MSCI World Index gained 10.74% for the month while the S&P500 total return index gained 10.93%. But the ...

Thanks to high house prices and compulsory superannuation the average Australian household is much wealthier than the average American hous...

Seems like it was hard to get both Yoyo and the Hollywood sign in focus.

We went to the (relatively) new Costco store at Canberra airport today. You have to buy a membership ($A60 p.a.) before you can look inside...

Another month of negative returns. Seven straight months of losses. Returns in USD terms were heavily affected by the rise in the US Dollar ...

I just heard that Steve Jobs died at age 56 . I felt sad but my immediate thoughts were that he got on with doing the big things he wanted t...

The portfolio got slammed this month by a double whammy - stock markets fell with the MSCI World Index falling 9.4% and the US Dollar rose s...

Google finally opened Google Plus to anyone who wants to join rather than by invitation only. So I joined to see what it was about. I get th...

I was just invited to come and talk in Rome. But I turned it down. I think I will have done enough traveling for the year and I don't f...

How much should I charge as a consultant? My employer allows us to spend 20% of our time on consulting. So I figure I should take my salary ...

We arrived in Australia four years ago today. From today Snork Maiden can apply for Australian citizenship, though now she doesn't seem...

Cambria manages the GTAA ETF . Manager Mebane Faber also writes an interesting blog . Now they have http://www.indexuniverse.com/sections/ne...

A recent paper by Wade Pfau really overturns some standard ideas about retirement planning. The usual story includes picking a "number...